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THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 



431 



consecrated temple of earth and heaven. Let us listen to 
his voice, which he sends before him along his dread and 
glorious way, saying, " Except ye be converted, and become 
as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom 
of heaven.-' 




ECCE HOMO. 



V5 



fiD 84 






-io ^'^ -j 



_ ly 



THE 



POETS AND POETRY 



OF THE BIBLE 



BY GEORGE GILFILLAN, 

AITTHOB or "THX BABDt Or BCOTLAVD," XTO., m. 



WITH AN AMERICAN INTRODUCTION 
BY L. P. BROCKETT, M.D. 



NEW YORK: 
H. S. GOODSPEED & CO. 

LONDON, ONTABIO : G. LAWBENCE. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S72, 

ByH. S, GOODSPEED, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 






PHEFACE. 

The succeeding work does not profess to be an ela- 
borate or full account of the mechanical structure of 
Hebrew poetrj, nor a work of minute and verbal 
criticism. In order tbat the book may be tried by its 
own pretensions, the author deems it necessary to 
premise that, while containing much literary criticism, 
and a considerable proportion of biographical and 
religious matter, and while meant to develop indi- 
rectly a subsidiary argument for the truth and divinity 
of the Bible, its main ambition is to be a Prose Poem, 
or Hymn, in honor of the Poetry and Poets of the 
inspired volume, although, as the reader will per- 
ceive, he has occasionally diverged into the analysis 
of Scripture characters, and more rarely into cognate 
fields of literature or of speculation. 

It may, perhaps, be asked why he has not con- 
formed to the common practice of printing his poetical 
quotations from Scripture, 05 poetry, in their form of 
parallelism. His answer is merely, that he never 
could bring himself to relish the practice, or to read 
with pleasure those translations of the Bible where 



PREFACE. 



it was used. Even favorite passages, in this guise, 
seemed new and cold to him. This, of course, was in 
some measure, lie knew, the effect of associations ; but 
such associations, he- knew also, were not cofined to 
him. He may say this the more fearlessly, as trans- 
lations of the great masterpieces of foreign literature 
into plain English prose are becoming the order of the 
^ay. ^ 

He has also to explain, that two, or, at the most, 
three, passages are here repeated from his " Galleries," 
for the reason, simply, that they at first belonged to 
a rough draft of the present work, which he began to 
draw out before his " First Gallery " appeared. They 
are now restored to their original position. 













' 










CONTENTS. 








Vaqz. 


Introduction, ; . . . . 




. 


- . 


21 


CHAPTER I. 










Circumstances creating and modifying Old Testament Poetry, 


33 


CHAPTER n. 










General Characteristics of Hebrew Poetry, 


. 


• 




". 55 


CHAPTER HI. 










Varieties of Hebrew Poetry, . . , 




• 


. 


75 


CHAPTER IV. 










Poetry of the Pentateuch, . 


• 


. 




. 84 


CHAPTER V. 










Poetry of the Book of Job, 




• 


. 


94 . 


CHAPTER M. 








/,.>)... 


Poetry of the Historical Books, . 


. 


/ 




,^1^ 


CHAPTER VII. 










Poetry of the Book of Psalms, 




* 


• 


136 


CHAPTER Vni. 










Solomon and his Poetry, 


. 


. 




. 153 


CHAPTER IX. 










Introduction to the Prophetic Books, 




. 


. 


166 


CHAPTER X. 










Isaiah, ..... 


• 






. 175 


Jeremiah, ..... * 




, 


, 


181 


Ezekiel 


; 


, 




. 187 


Daniel, 




• 




196 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE MINOR PROPHETS. 



Page. 
Jonah, •••.•••. 205 

Amos, .- .212 

Hosea, 218 

Joel, .223 

Micah, ....,,.. 227 

Nahum, .....•• 234 

Zephaniah, ,...••• . 235 

Habakkuk, ....... 239 

Obadiah, ........ 243 

Haggai, . 244 

Zechariah, . . . , . , . 249 

Malachi, .....,, 251 



CHAPTER Xn. 
Circumstances modifying New Testament Poetry, 

CHAPTER Xm. 
Poetry of the Gospels, 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Paul, 

CHAPTER XV. 
Peter and James, 



CHAPTER XVI. 



John, 



255 
263 
291 
315 
325 



CHAPTER XVII. 
Comparative estimate, influences, and effects of Scripture Poetry, 343 

CONCLUSION. 
Future Destiny of the Bible, . . . . , 375 



SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 
The Poetical characters in Scripture, 



400 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Fagb. 
Frontispiece, --------2 

Blowing Silver Trumpets, ------ 19 

Gideon's Fleece, -.-----30 

A Garden in the Holy Land, - - - - • 31 

Moses and Joshua coming down from the Mount, - - 37 

Praise the Lord, all Cedars, ----- 47 

Aceldama, -.------53 

Cedars of Labanon, ------ 57 

Elijah raising the dead Child, ----- 65 

Elijah Casting his Mantle on Elisha, - - - - 73 

Finding of Moses, .----«-85 

Moses before Pharaoh's Daughter, - - . - 91 

Ruth Gleaning in the Field, ------ 113 

Speak Lord, for thy Serv^ant Heareth, - - - - 121 

Endor : Saul's Servants Seeking the Witch, - •. . - - 127 

Dedication of the Temple, 133 

David Playing before Saul, --,--- 143 
I Gat me Men Singers, etc, ----- 153 

She Made Haste to Flee, 167 

The Paper Reeds by the Brooks, - - . - 173 

Jeremiah before the King, - - - . . - 179 

River Chebar, Scene of Ezekiel's Vision, - . - 185 



lO 



LIST OF ILLirSTEATIONS. 



Daniel InterpretiBg the Writing, - - - - 


- 193 


Daniel and the Hebrew Youth, - - - - 


197 


Jonah Cast Forth, . - - 


- 203 


The Captive Maiden, . - . - - 


213 


Women of Israel Meeting Saul, - - - - 


- 221 


Hezekiah's Prayer, - - - - - 


229 


Desolation of Babylon, - - - . . 


- 237 


Aaron's Rod that Budded, 


247 


The Origin of Music, ----.. 


253 


The Transfiguration, --•--. 


261 


Gethsemane, ------- 


- 265 


The Tnst Miracle, 


273 


Christ Blessing Little Children, - - - - 


- 281 


The Ascension, 


289 


Paul before the Council, - - - - . 


- 301 


Peter Healing the T,anie Man, - - - * - 


313 


John Writing to the Churches, - - - - 


- 323 


Mary and Martha,, 


331 


The River of the Water of Life, - - - . 


- 341 


Joseph's Dream, ------ 


349 


Moses on the Top of Pisgah, - - . - 


- 359 


Jesus Walking on the Sea, - - - - 


379 


Simeon and Anna in the Temple, - - - - 


. 391 


Gennesareth ------ 


401 


Jacob's Dream, ------ 


- 411 


Joash the ChUd King, - - - - . 


419 


Burial of John the Baptist, - - 


- 425 


Ecce Homo, - - 


431 



AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 

An old adage cautions us against all attempts to 
" paint the lily, or gild refined gold ; " and, mindful 
of its wisdom, we shall not devote either time or space 
to panegyrics on the glowing eloquence which irra- 
diates every page of this remarkable volume. The 
author has established too high a reputation for bril- 
liancy and elegance as a writer on sacred subjects to 
render any eulogies either appropriate or desirable. 

But of the subject on which he has expended such 
an affluence of eloquence we have a few words to say. 

The Bible occupies a higher plane than any merely 
human production, in three aspects: its object, its 
method of efPecting that object, and its inspired 
character. Its object is to exhibit to us man's lost 
condition ; the coming of that Eedeemer who was to 
restore him to more than his pristine estate (a coming 
watched for during the long ages of darkness) ; the 
advent of the Great sacrifice for sin ; the establish- 
ment of his spiritual kingdom on earth, and the pro- 
gress of that kingdom amid all the opposition of 
principalities and powers. It has accomplished this 



12 AMERICAN INTEODUCTION. 

object in a way peculiarly its own ; more than forty 
writers, of every rank and position in life, from the 
long and the lawgiver to the lowly herdsman and the 
illiterate fisherman of Galilee, took part in its compo- 
sition, and while a thread of narrative runs through 
the whole, giving the history a connection and sym- 
metry, every form of composition has its place in this 
wonderful book; genealogical records, vivid descrip- 
tions, a history of f amihes and races, remarkable alike 
for its comprehensiveness and its terseness ; the rapt 
visions of the seer, lyrics of great sweetness, heroic 
poems which stir the blood like the sound of a 
trumpet ; epics which surpass in their simple gran- 
deur Homer, Yirgil, Dante, or Milton ; dramas from 
which the world's greatest dramatists have been con- 
tent to copy ; hymns whose lofty ascriptions of praise 
have lifted the soul to heaven ; satires of the most 
trenchant severity; madrigals even, celebrating, under 
the imagery of earthly affection, the love of the Ee- 
deemer for His Church; and, mingled with these, 
prophecies, predictions, and descriptions of future 
events, of such eloquence and beauty as uninspired 
lips never uttered and uninspired pens never com- 
mitted to writing. In the 'New Testament there is 
less variety, but equal, if not superior, interest. From 
four biographers, of differing nationalities and educa- 
tion, we have the record of the life on earth of the 



AMEEICAN INTKODUCTION. 1 3 

blessed Immanuel, each marked by its own pecu- 
liarities of style and method, yet all agreeing in their 
statements, and each unconsciously corroborating the 
others, while presenting different phases of the char- 
acter of the DiviDe Redeemer. 

We have a brief epitome of the history of the early 
Church, and an incomplete biography of its greatest 
apostle ; we have the letters of that apostle, full of 
logic, philosophy, pathos, and affection ; the eloquent 
defence of Christianity, by argument, example, and 
exhortation, found in the Epistle to the Hebrews ; the 
general epistles of four other members of the Apos- 
tolic band ; and that grandest of inspired composi- 
tions, poem, drama, and prophecy in one, the Apo- 
calypse of St. John. 

All these books, which together constitute the 
Holy Scriptures, while marked by the peculiarities 
of their several writers, have yet this in common, that 
they are inspired by the Divine Spirit ; and this, while 
it insures their truth and their value to every member 
of the human family, gives them a dignity, a force, 
and a freshness which makes their study an ever new 
delight. If we desire to test this, we can easily do so 
by comparing any portion of the Scriptures with any 
uninspired work of a similar character, and written 
about the same time. The oldest of the sacred books 
of Oriental nations undertake to give a description 



J. AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 

of the creation of all things; and though we find 
traces of the traditions of Eden and of the deluge, 
yet how utterly childish and silly do they seem if 
read in connection with the sublime and stately 
march of events recorded in the first chapter of 
Genesis; Homer, the greatest of all the poets of 
Greece, has passages of rare beauty in the Iliad and 
Odyssey, but nowhere does he attain to the grandeur 
of that, pastoral epic, written long before his time, the 
Book of Job ; and in his finest descriptions he falls 
infinitely short of the vividness of Isaiah, who was 
nearly his contemporary. "We might go on with 
these comparisons almost without end, contrasting 
Habakkuk with Euripides, Paul with Plato, the 
writings of John, or James, or Peter, with the Epis- 
tles of Clement, or Polycarp, or the Shepherd of 
Hermas; but the result will be the same, and in 
every instance it will surprise those who have never 
made the experiment. The comparison will show 
most conclusively how utterly impossible it is that 
any portion of the sacred book could have been 
written without direct inspiration. 

Having premised this much concerning the general 
composition and structure of the Bible, we proceed 
to show why so large a portion of it is essentially 
poetical in its character. While poetry is the natural 
expression of intense emotion among all nations, it 



AMERICAN INTRODUCTIOIT. 



was one peculiarly delightful to the vivid imagina- 
tion and the impressible nature of the Oriental. The 
shepherd who, while watching his flocks on the vast 
plains of Western Asia, had observed the mutations 
of the stars, had watched the transformations of the 
moon, or had seen the planets, some of them seem- 
ingly lesser moons in their beauty, wax and wane 
with the seasons ; the traveller who, wearied with the 
glare of the blinding sun upon the burning sands, 
saw, in the near distance, the friendly " shadow of a 
great rock in a weary land," or the verdure of the 
palm which indicated the welcome presence of a 
fountain, or at least a cooling spring ; the herdsman, 
proud of his cattle browsing on the hillsides; the 
agriculturist, glorying in his vast fields of golden 
grain ; and the warrior, returning in triumph from a 
successful foray on the domains of some neighboring 
sheikh, and welcomed with music and dance by the 
wives and daughters of his own tribe ; all these, in that 
land of poetry and song, were moved to the deepest 
emotion by the sublime strains of the Hebrew poets. 

And even to us, in our colder clime, and with our 
more phlegmatic temperaments, there is much that is 
exciting in the songs of Miriam and Deborah, in those 
grand triumphal psalms of David, in that sublime 
prayer of Habakkiik, and in the lofty conceptions of 
Isaiah. We are impressed with the vivid word- 



J 5 AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 

pictures of Job, and the subtle philosophy of Solo« 
mon. 

We should remember, too, that these sacred poems 
and dramas which seem to us, through the imperfect 
medium of a translation, and at a time and in a 
country so remote from those in which they were first 
uttered, so grand and beautiful, were, to the people 
who first listened to them, and in a language replete 
with melody, far more attractive than they can pos- 
sibly be to us. 

All true poetry is, in some sense, inspired ; but this, 
whoever were the media through whom it was uttered, 
possessed a higher inspiration than any of the pro- 
phetic oracles of the Orient, or the mysterious sagas 
of the "West. It dealt with loftier themes than the 
poetry of the Asiatics, for the God of whom it spoke, 
and whose glories it described, was infinitely mightier 
in power, wiser in action, and purer in all His attri- 
butes than the gods of the heathen. What wonder, 
then, that the idolatrous dwellers on the banks of the 
Euphrates, entranced with the beauty of the Hebrew 
poetry, should have required of the captive Jews the 
melody of their national songs ? or that the impious 
monarch who sought to defile with unholy hands the 
sacred vessels of the temple, should have shrunk back 
terror-stricken when the Levite choir sang one of 
those terrible invocations of the Divine wrath upon 



AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 1 7 

the enemies of the chosen people of God found in the 
Psalms? 

The Jewish nation were commanded to retain in 
their memory, and rehearse to their children, the his- 
tory of God's dealings with them and all the way in 
which he had led them. We are all aware how much 
easier it is to remember a beautiful poem than a prose 
essay, even if it is equally eloquent in its diction. 
Among a people possessing very few books, this 
memorizing and repeating of poems even of con- 
siderable length, becomes not only a duty, but a 
pleasure. We all remember that in the Middle Ages 
the bands of troubadours, the minnesingers, and the 
Welsh and Gallic bards, were the depositaries, not 
only of the history and theology, but of the literatift'e, 
of Europe, and their recitations and repetitions of 
epic and lyric poetry were not only listened to with 
the deepest interest, but often awakened the patriotism 
and enthusiasm of their hearers, and prompted them 
to great and heroic deeds. 

It is altogether probable that those psalms which 
epitomize (either with or without a refrain) the history 
of God's dealings with -the Jewish nation were com- 
posed for the express purpose of being committed to 
memory, that their repetition might incite the nation's 
gratitude to God, and keep in mind the iinportant 
events of its grand and fateful history. We know 



AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 



that in our Saviour's time, and for many years before 
and after, the Jews from other lands, as they ap- 
proached Jerusalem, at the time of the great feasts 
invariably recited the psalms, some twelve in number, 
descriptive of the glory of Zion. Beautiful as these 
are, and well calculated to stir from their depths the 
emotions of God's ancient people, they do not appeal 
to Gentile hearts so strongly as some of the more 
distinctly Messianic psalms ; the poetic prophecies of 
Christ so sweet and touching, as well as so abundant, 
in Isaiah ; the prayer of Habakkuk, and the hymns 
of praise in the Apocalypse. 

We close this introduction, then, with this single 
thought, that in the book of God, whose every page 
bears the marks of a divine inspiration, and gives 
evidence that " holv men of God spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost," there are yet portions 
peculiarly adapted to move us to penitence, to faith, 
to holy living, and to rapturous joy; and that these 
portions are those in which the inspiration assumes the 
poetic form, and the sweet singer of Israel, the prophet 
on the holy mount, or the seer in clear-eyed vision of 
che glories of the Paradise of God, rehearses to us the 
songs, as well as the melodies, of heaven ; and these 
sweet and sublime utterances form the best part of 

the PoE'ftlY OF THE BeBLE. 

L. P. B. 

Brooklyn, N. Y., June, 1872. 




.1 i>A 



INTRODUCTION, 



That so much of Scripture should be written in the language of 
poetry, has excited some surprise, and created some inquiry ; and 
yet in nothing do we perceive more clearly than in this, the genu- 
ineness, power, and di\inity of the oracles of our faith. As the 
language of poetry is that into which all earnest natures are insen- 
sibly betrayed, so it is the only speech which has in it the power of 
permanent impression. As it gives two ideas in the, space of one, 
so it writes these before the view, as with the luminousness of 
fire. The language of the imagination is the native language of 
man. It is the language of his excited intellect — of his aroused 
passions — of his devotion — of all the higher moods and tempera- 
ments of his mind. It was meet, therefore, that it should be the 
language of his revelation from God. It was meet that, when 
man was called into the presence of his Maker, he should not be 
addressed with cold formality, nor in the words of lead, nor yet in 
the harsh thunder of peremptory command and warning, but that 
he should hear the same figured and glowing speech, to which he 
was accustomed flowing in mellower and more majestic accents 
from the lips of his God. 

The language of poetry has, therefore, become the language of 
the inspired volume. The Bible is a mass of beautiful figures — ^ita 
words and its thoughts are alike poetical — it has gathered around 
its central truths all natural beauty and interest — it is the temple, 
with one altar and one God, but illuminated by a thousand varied 
lights, and studded with a thousand ornaments. It has substan- 
tially but one declaration to make, but it utters it in the voices of 
the creation. Shining forth from the excellent glory, its light has 
been reflected on a myriad intervening objects, till it has been at 
length attempered for our earthly vision. It now beams upon us 



22 



INTRODUCTION. 



at once from the heart of man and from the countenance of 
nature. It has arrayed itself in the charms of fiction. It has 
gathered new beauty from the works of creation, and new warmth 
and new power from the very passions of clay. It has pressed into 
its service the animals of the forest, the flowers of the field, the 
stars of heaven, all the elements of nature. The lion spuming the 
sands of the desert, the wild roe leaping over the mountains, the 
lamb led in silence to the slaughter, the goat speeding to the 
\valdemess, the rose blossoming in Sharon, the lily drooping in the 
valley, the apple-tree bovdng under its fruit, the great rock shadow- 
ing a weary land, the river gladdening the dry place, the moon and 
the morning star, Carmel by the sea, and Tabor among the mountains, 
the dew from the womb of the morning, the rain upon the mown 
grass, the rainbow encompassing the landscape, the light God's sha- 
dow, the thunder His voice, the wind and the earthquake his foot- 
steps — all such varied objects are made as if naturally designed 
from their creation to represent Him to whom the Book and all its 
emblems point. Thus the quick spirit of the Book has ransacked 
creation to lay its treasures on Jehovah's altar — united the innu- 
merable rays of a far-streaming glory on the little hill. Calvary — 
and woven a garland for the bleeding brow of Immanuel, the 
flowers of which have been culled from the gardens of a universe. 
This praise may seem lofty, but it is due to the Bible, and to it 
alone — because it only, of all poems, has uttered in broken fulness, 
in finished fragments, that shape of the universal truth which 
instantly incarnates itself in living nature — fills it as a hand a 
glove — impregnates it as a thought a word — peoples it as a form 
a mirror. The truth the Bible teaches is not indeed the absolute, 
abstract, entire truth ; but it is (in our judgment, and as it shall 
yet be more fully understood) the most clear, succinct, consistent, 
broad, and practical representation of the truth whiph has ever 
fallen, or which in this world ever shall fall, upon the fantastic 
mirror of the human heart, or of nature, and which from both has 
compelled the most faithful and enduring image. It does not 
occupy the whole compass of the sky of the infinite from which 
it proceeds ; it does not waylay all future, any more than all past, 
fcmanations from that region ; but it covers, and commands as a 



INTRODUCTION. 23 



whole, that disk of the finite over which it bends. It is, as the 
amplest, clearest, and highest word ever spoken to man, entitled to 
command our belief, as well as, through the fire and the natural 
graces of the utterance, to excite our admiration, and comes over 
the world and man, not as a suppliant, but as a sovereign — not the 
timid, but (in the old sense) the tyrannous ruler of our earthly 
night, " until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts." 

Without entering into the vexed -and vexatious question of 
verbal inspiration — without seeking minutely to analyze that abys- 
mal word — inspiration — or to examine the details of a controversy 
which is little more than begun — we would, as a proper prelimi- 
nary to our future remarks, thus express more explicitly, though 
shortly, our general belief as to what the Bible is, and what is its 
relative position to men and to other works. 

The Bible is not then, to commence with negatives, a scientific 
book ; its intention is not to teach geology or astronomy, any 
more than meteorology or conchology; its allusions to the sub- 
jects of science are incidental, brief, glancing for a moment to a 
passing topic, and then rapidly returning to its main and master 
theme. Not only so, but its statements seem often to coincide 
with floating popular notions, as well as to clothe themselves in 
popular language, while they never fail, through their wonted 
divine alchymy, to deduce from them lessons of moral truth and 
wisdom. It is not a full but a fragmentary record even of that 
part of man's history to which it confines itself. It is not a moral 
or metaphysical treatise ; and, of logical analysis or deduction, it 
has (save in Paul's Epistles) little or none. The most religious, 
it is the least theological of books, so far as theology means a 
conscious, compact, distinctly enounced, and elaborately defended 
system. An artistic work it can scarcely be called, so slight is 
the artifice of its language and rh)rthmical construction. It is 
rude in speech, though not in knowledge. What then is the 
Bible 1 It is, as a history, the narrative of a multitude of mira- 
culous facts, which skepticism has often challenged, but never dis- 
proved, and which, to say the least, must now remain unsolved 
pJienomena — the aerolites of history — speaking like those from the 
sky of an unearthly region— the narrative, too, of a life (that of 



24 



INTRODUCTION. 



Jesus) at once ideally perfect, and trembling all over with human- 
ity, really spent under this sun, and yet lit along its every step 
and sufFermg by a light above it — a life which has since become 
the measure of all other lives, the standard of human and of abso- 
lute perfection — the ideal at once of man and of God. As a 
poem— moral and didactic— it is a repertory of divine instincts— a 
collection of the deepest intuitions of truth, beauty, justice, holi- 
ness — the past, the present, the future — which, by their far vision, 
the power with which they have stamped themselves on the belief 
and heart, the hopes and fears, the days and nights of humanity, 
their superiority to aught else in the thoughts or words of man, 
their consistency with themselves, their adaptation to general needs, 
their cheering influence, their progressive development, and their 
close-drawn connection with those marvellous and unshaken facts 
— are proved divine in a sense altogether peculiar and alone. 

In its relation to man, the Bible therefore stands thus : — It is 
the authority for the main principles of his belief; it is the manual 
of the leading rites and practices of his worship ; as the manifold 
echo of the voice of his conscience, it constitutes the grand stand- 
ard of his morality ; it is his fullest and most authentic missive 
from his Maker ; it is his sole torch into the darkness of the un- 
seen world ; all his science, his art, and his philosophy, it aims at, 
and, at last (in the course of its own development, for it is " a 
fire unfolding itself"), shall succeed in drawing into harmony with 
its prmciples; and of his poetry, it is the loftiest reach. Thus, 
it is designed at once to command and to charm, to subdue and 
to sublimate, the mind of man ; to command his belief into obedi- 
ence — to charm his heart and his imagination — to subdue his moral 
nature — and to sublimate the springs of his hope and joy ; predes- 
tined, too, to move along with his progress, but to move as did the 
fiery pillar with the armies of Israel, above and before him— his 
guide as well as companion, directing his motions, while attend- 
ing his march. Its power over man has, need we say ? been obsti- 
nately and long resisted— but resisted in vain. For ages, has this 
artless, loosely-piled, little book been exposed to the fire of the 
keenest investigation — a fire which meanwhile has consumed con- 
temptuously the mythology of the Iliad, the husbandry of the 



INTRODUCTION. 25 



Georgics, the historical truth of Livy, the fables of the Shaster, 
the Talmud, and the Koran, the artistic merit of many a popular 
poem, the authority of many a work of philosophy and science. 
And yet, there the Bible lies, unhurt, untouched, with not one of its 
pages singed — with not even the smell of fire having passed upon 
it Many an attempt has been made to scare away this " Fiery 
Pillar " of our wanderings, or to prove it a mere natural product 
of the wilderness ; but still, night after night, rises — like one of 
the sureand ever-shining stars — in the vanguard of the great march 
of man, the old column, gliding slow, but ^ding certainly to 
future lands of promise, both in the life that is, and in that which 
Cometh hereafter. 

In relation to other books, the Bible occupies a peculiar and 
solitary position. It is independent of all others; it imitates no 
other book ; it copies none ; it hardly alludes to any other, whether 
in praise or blame; and this is nearly as true of its later portions, 
when books were common, as of its earlier, when books were 
scarce. It proves thus its originality and power. Mont Blanc does 
not measure himself with Jura; does not name her, nor speak, 
save when in thunder he talks to her of God. Then only, too, 
does she 

" Answer from her misty shroud, 
Back to the joyous Alps." 

John never speaks of Plato, nor Paul of Demosthenes, nor Jesus 
of any writer, save Moses and the Prophets. In those great 
heights, you feel blowing round your temples, and stirring your 
hair, the free, original, ancient Breath of the upper world, uncon- 
ventional, unmixed, and irresistible, as the mountain tempest. It 
is a book unlike all others — ^the points of diiference being these, 
among many more : — First, There is a certain grand unconscious- 
ness, as in Niagara, speaking now in the same tone to the tourists 
of a world, as when she spoke to the empty wilderness and the 
Bilent sun ; as in the Himalayan Hills, which cast the same look 
of still sovereignty over an India unpeopled after the Deluge, as 
over an India the hive of sweltering nations. Thus burst forth 
cries of nature — the voices of the Prophets; and thus do their 
eyes, from the high places of the world, overlook all the earth. 



26 INTRODUCTION. 



You are aware, again, in singular union with this profound uncon- 
sciousness and simplicity, of a knowledge and insight equally pro- 
found. It is as though a child should pause amid her play, and 
tell you the secrets of your heart, and the particulars of your after 
history. The bush beside your path suddenly begins to sigh forth 
an oracle, in " words unutterable." That unconscious page seems, 
like the wheel in Ezekiel's vision, to be "full of eyes ;" and, open 
it wherever you may, you start back in surprise or terror, feeling 
"this book knows all about us; it eyes us meaningly; it is a 
discerner of the thoughts and intents of our hearts." Those herds- 
men, vinedressers, shepherds, fishermen, and homeless wanderers, 
are coeval with all time, and see the end from the beginning. You 
perceive, again, the presence of a high and holy purpose pen^ading 
the Book, which is to trace and promulgate the existence of certain 
spiritual laws, originally communicated by God, developed in the 
history of a peculiar people, illustrated by the ruin of nations, 
proclaimed in a system of national religion and national poetry, 
and at last sealed, cemented, and spread abroad through the blood 
and Gospel of One who had always been expected, and who at 
last arrived — the Christ promised to the Fathers. It is this which 
renders the Bible, in all its parts, religious and holy ; casts over its 
barest portions such an interest as the shadow of the Fiery Pillar 
gave to the sand and shrubs over which it passed — makes what 
other"\vise appear trifles, great as trappings of Godhead — and ex- 
tracts from fiction and fable, from the crimes of the e\'il and the 
failings of the good, aid to its main object, and illustration of its 
main principles. You find yourself again in the presence of a 
" true thing." We hear of the spell of fiction, but a far stronger 
spell is that of truth ; indeed, fiction derives its magic from the 
quantity of truth it contrives to disguise. In this book, you find 
truth occasionally, indeed, concealed under the garb of allegory 
and fable, but frequently in a form as naked and majestic as 
Adam when he rose from the greensward of Eden. "This is 
true," we exclaim, "were all else a lie. Here, we have found 
men, earnest as the stars, speaking to us in language which, by its 
very heat, impetuosity, unworldliness, fearlessness, almost if not 
altogether imprudence, severity, and grandeur, proves itself sm- 



INTRODUCTION. 



27 



CERE, if there be sincerity in earth or in heaven." Once more, 
the Bible, you feel, answers a question which other books cannot. 
This — the question of questions, the question of all ages — is, in 
our vernacular and expressive speech, " What shall I do to be 
saved V " How shall I be peaceful, resigned, holy, and hopeful 
here, and how happy hereafter, when this cold cloak — the body — 
has fallen off from the bounding soul within ?" To this, the " Iliad" 
of Homer, the Plays of Shakspeare, the " Celeste Mechanique " of 
La Place, and the Works of Plato, return no proper reply. To 
this immense query, the Book has given an answer, which may 
theoretically have been interpreted in various ways, but which, 
as a practical truth, he who runs may read ; which has satisfied 
the souls of millions; which none ever repented of obeying; 
and on which many of the wisest, the most learaed, the most 
slow of heart to believe, as well as the ignorant and simple- 
minded, have at last been content to lean their living confidence 
and their d}ing peace. 

The Book, we thus are justified in proclaiming to be superior 
to all other books that have been, or are, or shall ever be on 
earth. And tliis, not that it forestalls coming books, or includes 
all their essential truth within it ; nor that in polish, art, or in- 
stant effect, it can be exalted above the \\Titten masterpieces of 
human genius ; — what comparison in elaboration, any more than 
what comparison in girth and greatness, betv/een the cabinet and 
the oak ; — ^but it is, that the Bible, while bearing on its summit 
the hues of a higher heaven, overtopping with ease all human 
structures and aspirations — in earth, but not of it — communicating 
^\^th the omniscience, and recording the acts of the omnipotence, 
of God — is at the same time the Bible of the poor and lowly, 
the crutch of the aged, the pillow of the widow, the eye of the 
blind, the " boy's own book," the solace of the sick, the light of 
the dying, the grand hope and refuge of simple, sincere, and sor- 
rowing spirits ; — it is this which at once proclaims its unearthly 
origin, and so clasps it to the great common heart of humanity, 
that the extinction of the sun were not more mourned than the 
extinction of the Bible, or than even its receding from its present 
pride of place. For, while other books are planets shining with 



28 INTRODUCTION. 



reflected radiance, this book, like the sun, shines with ancient and 
unborrowed ray. Other books have, to their loftiest altitudes, 
sprung from earth; this book looks down from heaven high. 
Other books appeal to understanding or fancy ; this book to con- 
science and to faith. Other books seek our attention ; this book 
demands it — it speaks with authority, and not as the Scribes. 
Other books guide gracefully along the earth, or onwards to the 
mountain-summits of the ideal ; this, and this alone, conducts up 
the awful abyss which leads to heaven. Other books, after shin- 
ing their little season, may perish in flames, fiercer than those 
which destroyed the Alexandrian Library ; this must, in essence, 
remain, pure as gold, but unconsumable as asbestos, in the general 
conflagration. Other books may be forgotten in a universe where 
suns go down and disappear, like bubbles in the stream; the 
memory of this book shall shine as the brightness of that eternal 
firmament, and as those higher stars, which are for ever and ever. 

It is of the Bible, not as a revelation of special, but as a poem 
embod}Hng general truth, that we propose in the following work 
to speak. Our purpose is not to expound its theological tenets, 
nor its ritual worship (except so far as these modify the imagi- 
native tendencies and language of the writers), but to exhibit, in 
some degree, the beauty of the poetic utterance which the writers 
have given to their views and feelings. To this task we proceed, 
not merely at the instance of individuals whom we are proud to 
call friends, but because we feel that it has not been as yet ac- 
complished adequately, or in accommodation to the spirit of the age. 
Every criticism on a true poem should be itself a poem. We 
have many excellent, elaborate, and learned criticisms upon the 
Poetry of the Bible ; but the fragmentary essay of Herder alone 
seems to approach to the idea of a prose poem on the subject. A 
new and fuller effort seems to be demanded. Writers, too, far 
more adapted for the work than we, have diverged from it in 
various directions. Some have laudably devoted themselves to 
building up anew, and in a more masterly style, the evidences 
of the authenticity and truth of Scripture ; others are employed 
m rebutting the startling objections to the Bible which have arrived 
from across the German Ocean. Many are rearguing the whole 



INTRODUCTION. 



29 



questions of supernatural inspiration and the Scripture canon from 
their foundations; some are disposed to treat Bible poetry as 
something above literary criticism ; and others as something be- 
neath it The majority seem, in search of mistakes, or in search 
of mysteries, to have forgotten that the Bible is a poem at all. 

We propose therefore to take up this neglected theme — the 
Bards of the Bible ; and in seeking to develop their matchless 
merit as masters of the lyre — to develop, at the same time, indi- 
rectly, a subordinate though strong evidence that they are some- 
thing more— the rightful rulers of the belief and the heart of man. 
Perhaps this subject may not be found altogether unsuited to the 
wants of the age. If properly treated, it may induce some to 
pause before they seek any longer to pull in vain at the roots of a 
thing so beautiful. It may teach others to prize that Book some- 
what more for its literature, which they have all along loved, for 
its truth, its holiness, and its adaptation to their nature. It may 
strengthen some faltering con\'ictions, and tend to withdi-aw en- 
thusiasts from the exclusive study of imperfect modern and morbid 
models to those great ancient masters. It may, possibly, through 
the lesson of infinite beauty, successfully insinuate that of eternal 
truth into some souls hitherto shut against one or both ; and as 
thousands have been led to regard the Bible as a book of genius, 
from having first thought it a book of God, so in thousands may 
the process be inverted ! It \Adll, in any case, repay, in a certain 
measure, our debt to that divine volume, which, from early child- 
hood, has hardly ceased for a day to be our companion — which 
has colored our imagination, commanded our belief, impressed our 
tnought, and steeped our language — which, so familiarized to ua 
by long intimacy, has become rather a friend than a fiery revela- 
tion — to the proclamation of which, as containing a Gospel of 
Peace, we have devoted the most valued of our years — and to the 
illustration of wliich, as a word of unequalled genius, we now 
devote these pages, commending them to the Great Spirit of the 
Book. 




GIDEON-S FLEECE. 



^ 



THE 



POETS AND POETRY OF THE BIBLE. 



CHAPTER I. 

CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING OLD TESTAMENT 
POETRY. 

The admitted principle that every poet is partly the creator 
and partly the creature of circumstances, applies to the He- 
brew bards, as to others. But it is also true that the great 
poet is mare the creator than the creature of his age, and of 
its influences. And this must with peculiar force apply to 
those for whom we claim a certain supernatural inspiration, 
connected with their poetic afflatus, in some such mysterious 
way as the soul is connected, though not identified, with the 
electric fluid in the nerves and brain. What such writers 
give must be incomparably more than what they get from 
their country or their period. Still it is a very important 
inquiry, what events in Old Testament history, or what in- 
fluences from peculiar doctrines, from Oriental scenery, or 
from the structure of the Hebrew language and verse, have 
tended to awaken or modify their strains, and to bring into 
play those occasional causes which have lent them their mys- 
tic and divine power ? This is the subject of the present 
chapter, and we may further premise, that whenever even 
poetic inspiration is genuine, it never detracts from its merit 
to record the occasions which gave.it birth, the sparks of na- 
tional or individual feeling from which it exploded, or the 
influence of other minds in lighting its flame, and can much 
less when it is the " authentic fire " of Heaven of v/hich wo 
speak. ^ 



34 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING 



The first circumstance wc mention is no less than the 
creation itself, as it appeared to the Jewish mind. The aus- 
tere simplicity of that remarkable verse of Genesis, " In the 
beginning God created the heavens and the earth," sounds a 
fitting keynote to the entire volume. Never shall we forget 
the emotion with which we read those words for the first 
time in the original tongue. The words themselves, perhaps 
the earliest ever written — their information so momentous — 
the scene to which, in their rugged simplicity, they hurried 
us away, gave them a profound and almost awful interest ; 
and we sat silent and motionless, as under the response of 
an oracle on which our destiny depended. Longinus has 
magnified the poetry of the divine exclamation, '• Let there 
be light, and there was light :" but on our feelings the pre- 
vious statement had a greater effect, throwing us back into 
the gulf of ages, and giving us a dim retrospect of gigantic 
cycles rolling forward in silence. The history of the crea- 
tion, indeed, is all instinct with poetry. As including an ac- 
count of the preparations for the reception of man. how beau- 
tifully does it evolve. How, like a drama, where the interest 
deepens toward the conclusion, does it, step by step, awaken 
and increase our attention and curiosity. First, the form- 
less deep arises — naught seen but undefined and heaving 
waters, and naught heard but above the surge the broodings 
of the Eternal Spirit. Then light flashes forth, like some 
element already existing in all things, though veiled, so in- 
stantaneous in its appearance. Then, the firmament arises, 
dividing the waters from the waters. Then, heaving up 
from its overhanging seas, the dry land shows its dark earthy 
substance, to bear the feet of man. Then in the sky. globes, 
collecting and condensing the scattered light, shine forth to 
number the years and direct the steps of man. Then the 
waters, under the genial warmth, begin to teem with life, and 
the earth to produce its huge offspring, and to send up, as 
" in dance," its stately and fruit-bearing trees, to feed the 
appetite and relieve the solitude of man. And then, the 
preparations for his coming being complete, he appears. 
The stage having been swept, and garnished, and lighted up, 
the great actor steps forward. " And on the sixth day God 
said. Let us make man in our own image." How magnificent 
these preparations ! how fine their gradations ! and how 
deep and mystical the antithesis between the scale on which 



OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 



35 



they had been conducted and the result in which they had 
issued, in the appearance, amid all that vast and costly thea- 
tre, of a child of clay. And how does the contrast swell, in- 
stead of narrowing, when we believe, with the geologists, 
that innumerable centuries had in these preparations been 
expended ! The impulse given to the imagination of the 
Jews, through their conceptions of the creation, was great, 
and the allusions of their poets to it afterwards are numerous. 
Solomon, for instance, in his personification of Wisdom, de- 
scribes it in language lofty as that of Moses. " When he 
appointed the foundations of the earth, then was I by him, 
as one brought up with him." Job abounds in references to 
this cardinal truth. Isaiah, speaking in the person of God, 
and throwing down a gauntlet to all the heathen deities, says, 
" I have made the earth, and created man upon it. I, even 
my hands, have stretched out the heavens." Thus does this 
primal truth or fact of Scripture flash down light and glory 
over all its pages, and the book may be said to stand in the 
brightness of its opening verse. 

Another event teeming with poetry, and which had no 
small effect on the Jewish imagination, was the flood. The 
tradition of a flood is found in all nations, but often in com- 
pany with ludicrous images and circumstances which mar its 
sublimity. It is described by Moses with even more than 
his usual bareness, and almost sterile simplicity. His lan- 
guage scarcely ever rises, save when, he speaks of the " win- 
dows of heaven being opened." above the level of prose ; not 
another figure in the narrative confesses his emotion at the 
sight of deluge enwrapping the globe — the yell of millions of 
drowning and desperate men and animals contending with 
the surge of the sea — the mountains of earth overtopped by 
the aspiring waters — the sun retiring from the sight, as if in 
grief and for ever — and, amid all this assemblage of terrors, 
the one vessel rising majestic and alone, through whose win- 
dows look forth Seth's children, their eyes dimmed and dark- 
ened with tears. And yet the bare truth of the flood, sown 
in the hearts of the Hebrews, became a seed of poetry. The 
flood put a circle of lurid glory round the head of their God ; 
it awed the patriarchs in their midnight tents — it gave a new 
charm and beauty to the " rainbow which encompasseth the 
heavens with a glorious circle, and the hands of the Most 
High have bended it," It brought out all the possible gran- 



X6 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING 

deur of the element of water. Frequent are the allusions to 
it in after days. " The Lord," says David, " sitteth upon the 
floods," alluding not altogether to the swellings of Jordan, 
nor to the swellings, seen from Carmel, of the Mediterranean, 
but to tliat ocean without a shore, on which his eye saw the 
Jehovah seated, his wings the winds, his voice the thunder 
of the sea-billows, his feet feathered with lightnings, and his 
head lost in the immensity of o'er-canopying gloom. Again, 
saith Isaiah, in the name of the Almighty, " This is as the 
waters of Noah unto me, for as I have sworn that the waters 
of Noah should go no more over the earth, so have I sworn 
not to be wroth with thee." And, besides other allusions, 
we find Peter speaking of God bringing in a " flood upon the 
world of the ungodly." Thus do the "waters of Noah" 
send down a far deep voice, which is poetry, into the depths 
of futurity ; and there is no topic, even yet, which, if handled 
with genius, is so sure to awaken interest and emotion. 

Passing over the events connected with the confusion of 
tongues and the dispersion of the human race — the histories 
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the romantic story of Joseph 
and his brethren — the wondrous phenomena attending the 
departure of Israel from Egypt, we pause at Sinai, the centre 
of the ancient system. There was enacted a scene fitted to 
produce, in the first instance, an alarm and awe inconsistent 
with the sublime, but ultimately to create of itself a volcanic 
stream of national imagination, rising from the roots of the 
savage hill. Sinai, bare, dark, craggy, in itself, surrounded 
suddenly by a mantle of gloom, and crowned above all other 
hills with a diadem of fire — a fierce wind blowing in restless 
eddies around it — torrents of rain descending through the 
darkness — the lightnings of Grod playing upon the summit — 
thunders crashing incessantly — the trump which shall call 
the dead to judgment, sending forth a preliminary note, and 
causing the mountain to thrill and tremble — and heard at inter- 
vals, above all, the very voice of the Eternal — the millions of 
Israel standing silent on the plain, awe and wonder casting a 
shadow over their faces — and, amid all this, one lonely man 
going up the hill, and quaking as he goes — the utterance of 
the fiery law from amid the gloom — the Amen of the tribes — 
the seclusion of Moses with Jehovah, for forty days, on the 
top of the mount — the finger of God, the same finger which, 
dipping itself in glory, had touched the firmament, and left 




^iVf'A>##|l!| 



OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 



39 



as its trace the sun, writing the ten precepts on the two ta- 
bles — the passing of the Lord before Moses, as he hasted 
and threw himself on the ground — the descent of the favored 
man, with his face shining out the tidings where he had 
been — all this taken together, while calculated to cast a salu- 
tary terror down to remote ages, and to make the children, 
among the willows of Canaan, to tremble at the name of Si- 
nai, was fitted, too, to produce a peculiar and terrible poetry. 
We find, accordingly, the shadow of Horeb communicating 
influence to almost all the Hebrew prophets. It was unques- 
tionably in David's eye, when he sung that highest of his 
strains, the ISth Psalm, which has carried our common metri- 
cal versions of it to unwonted pitches of power : — 

" On cherub and on cherubim 
Full royally he rode, 
And on the wings of mighty winds 
Came flying all abroad." 

It was in Daniel's view, when he described the fiery stream 
going before the Ancient of Days. The prayer of Habakkuk 
is a description of the same scene. " God came from Teman, 
and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered 
the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise." Paul, 
even, when turning his back on the mount that might be 
touched, seems to linger in admiration of its grandeur, and 
his description of it is full of poetry. It is hardly too 
much to say that the genius of the race was kindled at the 
fires of Sinai. 

Wo mention, as another powerful stimulus to the imagi* 
nation of the Jews, the peculiar economy of that peculiar 
people. This, what with the thunders amid which it was 
cradled — the meteors which, as a cloud by day, and a pillar 
of fire by night, guided and guarded it — the miracles which, 
like a supernatural circle, hedged it in — the mysteries of 
its tabernacle — the unearthly brightness of that Shechinah 
which filled its holy of holies — the oracular lustre shining 
around its priests — the pomp, the solemnity, and the minute- 
ness of its sacrifices — the wailing cadences, the brisker mea- 
sures, blended with the awful bursts of its ministrelsy — the 
temple, with its marble and gold, its pinnacles turned, like 
the fingers of suppliant hands, to heaven — its molten sea, 
and bulls of brass — its "carved angels, ever eager-eyed." 



40 



CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING 



shapes of celestial sculpture — its mercy seat, so overshad- 
owed, so inviolable, so darkened, amid its glories, by a pe- 
numbra of divine anger — the atmosphere of holiness suf 
fused, like strange sunshine, over every bell and breastplate, 
candlestick and cherub — the typical character which filled 
even the solitudes of the place with meaning, and shook 
them with silent eloquence — the feeling of expectancy and 
the air of prophecy which reigned over the whole — all this 
exerted an influence over the imagination as well as the 
faith, and cast a more than mortal poetry around a system 
of ceremonies so unique and profound. Hence the merest 
details, in Leviticus and Exodus, of these rites, become in- 
stinct with imagination, and need neither verse nor figure to 
add to their naked greatness. 

Among the doctrines peculiar to the Jews, and inspiring 
their genius, we may enumerate the unity of the divine 
nature, their idea of the divine omnipresence, their expecta- 
tion of a Messiah, their doctrine of a millennium, and their 
views of a future state. The doctrine of divine unity, by 
collecting all the scattered rays of beauty and excellence, 
from every quarter of the universe, and condensing them 
into one overpowering conception — by tracing the innumera- 
ble rills of thought and feeling to the fountain of an infinite 
mind — surpasses the most elegant and ethereal polytheism 
immeasurably more than the sun does the " cinders of the 
element." However beautiful the mythology of GJ-reece, as 
interpreted by Wordsworth — however instinct it was with 
imagination — although it seemed to breathe a supernatural 
soul into the creation, to rouse and startle it all into life, to 
fill the throne of the sun with a divine sovereign, to hide a 
Naiad in every fountain, to crown every rock with an Oread, 
to deify shadows and storms, and to send sweeping across 
the waste of ocean a celestial emperor — it must yield with- 
out a struggle to the thought of a great One Spirit, feeding 
by his perpetual presence the lamp of the universe, speaking 
in all its voices, listening in all its silence, storming in its 
rage, reposing in its calm, its light the shadow of his great- 
ness, its gloom the hiding-place of his power, its verdure the 
trace of his steps, its fire the breath of his nostrils, its mo- 
tion the circulation of his untiring energies, its warmth the 
eflauence of his love, its mountains the altars of his worship, 
and its oceans the mirrors where he beholds his form, 



OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 41 

*• glassed in tempests." Compared to those conceptions, 
how does the fine dream of the Pagan Mythus melt away — 
Olympus, with its multitude of stately celestial natures, 
dwindle before the solitary immutable throne of Jehovah — 
the poetry as well as the philosophy of Greece shrink before 
the single sentence, " Hear, Israel, the Lord our Grod is 
one Lord '' — and Wordsworth's description of the origin of 
its multitudinous gods looks tame beside the mighty lines of 
Milton — 

" The oracles are dumb, 
No voice or hideous hum, 
Runs through the arched roof, in words deceiving. 
Apollo, from his shrine, 
. Can no more divine, 
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
No nightly trance, or breathed spell, 
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. 
He feels from Judah's land, 
The dreadful Infant's hand. 
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyu. 
Nor all the gods beside. 
Longer dare abide, 
Nor Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine. 
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true. 
Can, in his swaddling bands, control the damned crew," 

Closely connected with this doctrine of divine unity, is 
that of divine omnipresence. To the Hebrews, the external 
universe is just a bright or black screen concealing God. 
All things are full of. yet all distinct from, him. That cloud 
on the mountain is his covering ; that muttering from the 
chambers of the thunder is his voice ; that sound on the top 
of the mulberry-trees is his " going ;" in that wind, which 
bends the forest or curls the clouds, he is walking ; that sun 
is his still commanding eye — Whither can they go from his 
Spirit ? whither can they flee from his presence ? At every 
step, and in every circumstance, thev feel themselves God- 
inclosed, God-filled, God-breathing men, with a spiritual pre- 
sence lowering or smiling on them from the sky, sounding in 
wild tempest, or creeping in panic stillness across the surface 
of the earth ; and if they turn within, lo ! it is there also — 
an " Eye" hung in the central darkness of their own hearts. 
Hence the muse of the Hebrew bard is not Dame Memory, 
nor any of her siren daughters, but the almighty, all-per- 
vading Spirit himself, who is at once the aubjeot, the auditor, 
and the inspirer of the song. 



42 



CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING 



What heart, in what age or country, has not, at some time 
or other, throbbed in the expectation of a Messiah, a " Com- 
ing One," destined to right the wrongs, stanch the wounds, 
explain the mystery, and satisfy the ideal, of this wondrous, 
weary, hapless, and " unintelligible" world — who shall recon- 
cile it to itself, by giving it a purer model of life, and a 
nobler principle of action — who shall form a living link, 
wedding it to the high and distant heaven — who shall restora 
the skies, the roses, and the hearts of Eden, and instruct us, 
by his plan of reconciliation, that the fall itself was a stage 
in the triumph of man ? Humanity has not only desired, 
but has cried aloud for his coming. The finest minds of the 
Pagan world have expressed a hope, as well as a love of his 
appearing ; it might indeed be proved that this •' Desire of 
all Nations" lies at the foundation of all human hope, and is 
the preserving salt of the world. From earth to heaven, the 
question was for ages reverberated, " Who is worthy to open 
the book, and to loose the seals thereof?" And for ages, all 
earnest men wept much because the volume remained shut. 
But in the minds of the Jews, this feeling dwelt with pecu- 
liar intensity and concentration. It rendered every birth a 
possible epoch ; it hung a spell over every cradle. The De- 
sire of all Nations was, in a profound sense, the desire of 
Jewish females. From the heart, it passed naturally into 
the imagination, and from thence into the poetry of the land, 
which is rarely so sublime as when picturing the character 
and achievements of the Desired and Expected One. This 
desire, in what singular circumstances was it fulfilled ! The 
earth was at rest and still. The expectation of many ages 
had come to its height. In the hush of that universal 
silence, we may imagine the hearts of all nations panting 
audibly, with strong and intolerable longing. And when the 
expectation was thus at the fullest, its object arrived. And 
where did the Desire of all Nations appear ? Did he lift up 
his head in the palaces of Rome, or the porticoes of Athens ? 
No ; but he came where the desire was beating most 
strongly — to the core of the great heart which was panting 
for him— to the village of Bethlehem, in the midst of Judea, 
and the neighborhood of Jerusalem. And how came he ? 
Was it in fire and glory, robed in a mantle of tempest, and 
with embroiderings of lightning ? No ; but a.s a weeping 
babe ! " To us a cliild:^ was given. And all who had en- 



OLD TESTAMENT TOETRY. 



43 



tered into the genuine spirit of the ancient poetic announce- 
ments, felt this to be "very good." 

The doctrine of a millennium must surely have been a 
pure emanation from Heaven. As a mere dream, we could 
conceive it crossing the brain of a visionary, or quickening 
the eager pen of a poet as he wrote it down. But, as a dis- 
tinct, prominent, and fixed prospect, in the onward view of 
the philanthropist — as any thing more than a castle in the 
clouds — it seems to have been let down, like Jacob's ladder, 
from a higher region. Even granting that it was only a tra- 
dition which inspired Virgil's Pollio, it was probably a tra- 
dition which had floated from above. To the same region 
we may trace the allusions to a millennium, which may be 
found, more or less distinctly, in the many mythologies of 
the world. But in Scripture alone do we find this doctrine 
inwrought with the whole system, pervading all its books, 
and, while thoroughly severed, on the one hand, from ab- 
surdity and mysticism, expressed, on the other, in a profu- 
sion of figure, and painted in the softest and richest colors. 
Did the idea of a happy world, whether communicated to the 
soul of Virgil by current tradition, or caught from the lips 
of some wandering Jew, or formed by the mere projection of 
the favorite thought of a golden age upon the canvas of the 
future, raise him for a time above himself, and inspire one 
strain matchless among Pagan poets ? What a provision, 
then, must have been made for the production of a world of 
poetry, from the thick gleams and glimpses of distant glory, 
scattered over the pages of all the bards of Israel ! How 
sublime the conception, in its own original fountains, repos- 
ing under the tree of life, the leaves of which are for the heal- 
ing of the nations ! and especially as we find it flaming 
around the lips of the prophets of God, who, seeing in the 
distance the wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard 
with the kid ; the mountain of the Lord's house exalted 
above the mountains and established above the hills ; the 
New Jerusalem coming down from God, as a bride adorned 
for her husband ; earth uplifted from the neighborhood of 
hell to that of heaven ; the smoke of its every cottage rising 
like the smoke of an altar ; peace brooding on its oceans ; 
righteousness running in its streams ; and the very bells of 
its horses, bearing " Holiness to the Lord" — ^leaped up ex- 
ulting at the sight, and sent forward, from their watch 



44 



CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AN! MODIFYING 



towers, a far cry of recognition and enthusiasm, " Arise, 
shine ; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord- is 
risen upon thee." " Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as 
the doves to their windows ?" '• The sun shall be no more 
thy light by day ; neither for brightness shall the moon give 
light unto thee. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither 
shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be thine 
everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be 
ended." Who, but writers in the highest sense inspired, 
could often assume, or long sustain, such strains as these ? 
Who, but they, could keep so steadily separate from the deep 
clouds of the present, a prospect so distinct and sublime ? 
Who, uninfluenced by the Spirit of the Lord, would have 
dared, not merely as a poetic conception, but as a prophetical 
announcement, to predict what all history and all experience 
would seem to stamp with the wildest print of Utopia? 
" Few, few have striven to make earth heaven," but as few, 
unenlightened from on high, have ever long grasped or de- 
tained the brilliant possibility. It seems, at least, the last 
refinement of philosophical conjecture. And yet, in the He- 
brew prophets, we find it closing every vista, irradiating eve- 
ry gloom, lying, like a bright western heaven, at the termina- 
tion of every prophetic day ; coloring the gorgeous page of 
Isaiah ; gleaming through the willows where Jeremiah had 
hung his harp ; glaring on the wild eye of Ezekiel, who turns 
from his wheels, " so high that they were dreadful," to show 
the waters of the sanctuary becoming an immeasurable and 
universal stream ; mingling with the stern denunciations of 
Micah ; tinging with golden edges the dreams of Daniel ; and 
casting transient rays of transcendent beauty amid the ob- 
scure and troubled tragedy of the Apocalypse. 

With respect to a future state, the conceptions of the 
heathens were not only imperfect and false, but gross and 
coarse. In that dreary Tartarus, there were indeed many 
statuesque forms and noble faces marked out from amid the 
general haze, and visible in the leaden light. There was 
poetry in the despairing thirst of Tantalus ; poetry in the 
eternal stone, wet with the eternal sweat of Sisyphus ; poetry 
in the daughters of Danaus filling up the same everlasting 
sieve ; poetry in that grim figure of Ajax, silent in the 
shades, and also in that pale form of Dido, gliding from the 
eye of her lover into the gloom ; poetry clustering round 



OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 45 

the rock of Theseus, and tlie wheel of Ixion. In their pic- 
tures of Elysium, too, there was a soft and melancholy en- 
chantment, most beauteous, yet most rueful to feel. It was 
'• sunlight sheathed." It was heaven, with a shade, not un- 
allied to earth, veiling its brightness. There might be, to 
quote Wordsworth imitating Virgil, 

" An ampler ether, a diviner air, 
And fields invested with purpureal gleams, 
Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day 
Earth owns, is all unworthy to survey." 

But surely the radiance had not that spirituality, or solemn 
beauty, which characterizes our heaven.* The agonies, too, 
were monotonous attitudes of material woe ; they lacked 
dignity and relief; sculptured with rude power, they were 
sculptured in rock ; their line was too uniform and too 
black ; they lacked those redeeming touches which, like white 
streaks upon marble, mingle with, and carry off, the uniform 
intensity of gloom. All wretchedness lay upon them ; but 
it was a silent, not an eloquent misery. Despair looked 
through them ; but it was dumb, deaf, and dead. Eternity 
brooded over the whole ; but it was dull and idle, like the 
calm, sullen face of a marsh or moorland, not the living look 
of a mountain or of the sea. There is no change, no "lower 
deep conducting to a yet lower," in a descending series. 
Intercourse with other worlds there is little or none. The 
region is insulated in its misery — " beyond the beams of 
noon, and eve's one star." No stray angel looks down sud- 
denly, like a sunbeam, into its darkness. No grand proces- 
sion comes from afar, to look and wonder at its miseries. It 
is a neglected ruin, rather than a prison of pain. Such is 
the heathen hell, as discovered to us, by Virgil, but espe- 
cially by Homer. How different, and how much more strik- 
ing, the glimpses in Scripture, pencilled, as through chinks in 
the wall of the mansion of the second death ! Its locality is 
untold, its creation and date are left in obscurity, its names 
are various — but all rather veils than discoveries of what 
seems elaborately concealed. It is hell, the hidden or sunken 
place ; it is Gehenna, Tophet ; it is a smoke ascending, as if 

* Wc speak here not so much of the Jewish as of the Christian 
notions of the future state. 



46 CIRCITMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYINO 

to darken the universe ; it is a lake burning with fire and 
brimstone, but of which the interior is unseen ; it is a pit 
bottomless, a fire unquenchable, a worm undying, a death — 
the second and the last ; it is " without," yet not unvisited 
or unseen ; they shall be tormented in the presence of the 
Lamb and the holy angels ; they shall go forth, and look on 
the carcasses of them that are slain, whose worm dieth not. 
This is all, or nearly all we know of it. And yet how un- 
speakably tremendous ! Like the disjointed words upon the 
wall (in Coleridge's " Dream ") taken singly, each word is a 
riddle — put them together, and what a lesson of lurid terror do 
they combine to teach ! And from such pregnant expres- 
sions have come forth, accordingly, all the sublime and dreary 
dreams of after poetry, the savage sculpture of Dante, Mil- 
ton's broad pictures, Pollok's bold sketch, and the whole 
gallery of gloomy visions which may be found in our great re- 
ligious prose-authors, from Jeremy Taylor to Thomas Aird. 

The next influence we mention, as operating on the He- 
brew poets, is the climate and scenery of their country. To 
be susceptible of such skyey influences is one main distinc- 
tion between genius and mere talent, and also between the 
enthusiast and the fanatic. There is a vulgar earnestness 
which, while addressing a multitude amid the most enchant- 
ing scenery, and at the spiritual hour of evening, would feel 
no elevation, but bellow on as before, susceptible only to the 
animal sympathy arising from the concourse of human 
beings, and not at all to the gradual shading in of the sky over 
that sea of faces, to the voice of the distant streams, and to 
the upper congregation of the stars, coming out, as if they 
too would listen to the Gospel of glad tidings. Not thus 
was Paul unaware of the scene, at Mars Hill, as he preached 
Jesus and the resurrection. Not thus indifi"erent was Ed- 
ward Irving to the glories of the Frith of Forth, as again 
and again, in the open air, and in full view of them, " rolled 
the rich thunder of his awful voice," to thousands of silent 
men. Even the more literal soul of AVhitefield caught oc- 
casionally in such scenes a glow of enthusiasm, and the coarse 
current of his thought and diction was tinged with a gleam 
of poetry. It is vain to say that some men will, nay, ought to 
be so swallowed up in their subject, as to remember nothing 
besides. Religion, on the contrary, is a subject which, if 
properly presented, will challenge, as its own, alike tho 



1 

1 



OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 49 

splendors of earth and heaven, and the voice of the true 
poet preacher will appear, as it rises and swells with the 
theme, worthy of concerting with the eldest harmonies of 
nature. Those modes, on the other hand, of presenting re- 
ligious truth, which, amid beautiful scenery and seasons of 
special spiritual interest, seem harsh, hard, unsuitable, which 
jar upon the musical sweetness and incense breathing all 
around, and of which the echo sounds from above like a 
scream of laughter, contradiction, and scorn, are therein 
proved to be imperfect if not false. They are not in unison 
with the spirit of the surrounding universe, but are rejected 
and flung back by it as foul or rabid falsehoods. 

The Hebrew prophets lived in the eye of nature. "We 
always figure them with cheeks embrowned by the noons of 
the East. The sun had looked on them, but it was lovingly — 
the moon had " smitten" them, but it was with poetry, not 
madness — they had drunk in fire, the fire of Eastern day, 
from a hundred sources — from the lukewarm brooks of their 
land, from the rich colors of their vegetation, from their 
mornings of unclouded brightness, from their afternoons of 
thunder, from the large stars of their evenings and nights. 
The heat of their climate was strong enough to enkindle but 
not to enervate their frames, inured as they were to toil, fa- 
tigue, fasting, and frequent travel. They dwelt in a land of 
hills and valleys, of brooks and streams, of spots of exube- 
rant vegetation, of iron-ribbed rocks and mountains — a land, 
on one side, dipping down in the Mediterranean Sea, on ano- 
ther, floating up into Lebanon, and on the others, edged by 
deserts, teeming at once with dreadful scenery and secrets — 
through which had passed of old time the march of the Al- 
mighty, and where his anger had left for its memorials, here, 
the sandy sepulchre of those thousands whose carcasses fell 
in the wilderness, and there, a whole Dead Sea of vengeance, 
lowering amid a desolation fit to be the very gateway of hell — 
standing between their song and subject-matter, and such a 
fiery clime, and such stern scenery — the Hebrew bards were 
enabled to indite a language more deeply dyed in the colors 
of the sun, more intensely metaphorical, more faithfully 
transcriptive of nature, a simpler, and yet larger utterance, 
than ever before or since rushed out from the heart and 
tongue of man. 

And not merely were there thus certain general features 



50 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING 

connected with the leading events in Old Testament history, 
with the peculiar doctrines of the Jews, and with the cli- 
mate and scenery of their country, which secured the exist- 
ence of poetry, but the very construction and characteristics 
of the Hebrew tongue were favorable to its birth. Destitute 
of the richness and infinite flexibility of the Greek, the ar- 
tificial stateliness and strength of the Latin, and the varied 
resources and borrowed beauties of modern languages, 
Adam's tongue — the language of the early giants of the spe- 
cies — was fitted, beyond them all, for the purposes of lofty 
poetry. It was, in the first place, as Herder well calls it, an 
abyss of verbs ; and there is no part of speech so well adapted 
as the verb to express motion, energetic action, quick trandi- 
tion, and strong endurance. This language was no quiet or 
sullen sea, but all alive, speaking, surging, now bursting in 
breaker, and now heaving in long deep swell. Its adjectives 
were borrowed from verbs, served their purposes, and did 
their work ; and though barren in abstract terms, it was none 
the less adapted for the purposes of poetry ; for it abounded 
in sensuous terms — it swarmed with words descriptive of the 
objects of nature. It contains, amid its apparent inopia 
wrhorum^ more than two hundred and fifty botanical terms ; 
and, then, its utterance, more than that of any other tongue, 
was a voice from the heart. We sometimes hear orators 
who appear to speak with the lungs, instead of the lips ; but 
the Hebrews heaved up their rage and their joy, their grief 
and their terror, from the depths of their hearts. By their 
frequent use, too, of the present tense, they have uncon- 
sciously contributed to the picturesque and powerful effect 
of their writings. This has quickened their every page, and 
made their words, if we may so speak, to stand on end. 

It may, indeed, be objected to Hebrew poetry, that it has 
no regular rhythm, except a rude parallelism. What then ? 
Must it be, therefore, altogether destitute of music ? Has 
not the rain a rhythm of its own, as it patters on the pane, or 
sinks on the bosom of its kindred pool ? Hath not the wind 
a harmony, as it bows the groaning woods, or howls over the 
mansions of the dead ? Have not the waves of ocean their 
wild bass ? Has not the thunder its own " deep and dread- 
ful organ-pipe?" Do they speak in rhyme? Do they mur- 
mur in blank verse? Who taught them to begin in Iambics, 
or to close in Alexandrinop % And shall not God's own 



OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 5 1 

speech have a peculiar note, no more barbarous than is the 
voice of the old woods or the older cataracts ? 

Besides, to call parallelism a coarse or uncouth rhythm, 
betrays an ignorance of its nature. Without entering at large 
on the subject of Hebrew versification, we may ask any one, 
who has paid even a slight attention to the subject, if the ef- 
fect, whether of the gradational parallel, in which the second 
or responsive clause rises above the first, like the round of a 
ladder, as in the 1st Psalm — 

j " Blessed is the man 

/ That hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, 

/ Nor stood in the way of sinners : 

f And hath not sat in the seat of the scornful ;" 

or the antithetical parallel, in which two lines correspond 
with each other, by an opposition of terms and sentiments, as 
in the words — 

" The memory of the just is blessed, 
But the name of the wicked shall rot;" 

or the constructive parallel, in which word does not answer 
to word, nor sentence, as equivalent or opposite, but there is 
a correspondence and equality between the difi"erent proposi- 
tions, in the turn and shape of the whole sentence, and of 
the constructive parts — noun answering to noun, verb to verb, 
negative to negative, interrogation to interrogation, as in the 
19th Psalm— 

" The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul ; 
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple ; 

or, finally, the introverted parallel, in which, whatever be the 
number of lines, the first runs parallel with the last, the se- 
cond with the penultimate, and so throughout, such as — 

" My son, if thine heart be wise. 
My heart shall rejoice, even mine ; 
Yea, my reins shall rejoice 
When thy lips speak right things — " 

We ask, if the eff"ect of all these, perpetually intermingled as 
they are, be not to enliven the composition, often to give dis- 
tinctness and precision to the train of thought, to impress 
the sentiments upon the memory, and to give out a har- 
mony, which, if inferior to rhyme in the compression pro- 
duced by the difficulty (surmounted) of uniting varied sense 



52 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING 

with recurring sound, and in the pleasure of surprise ; and 
to blank verse, in freedom, in the effects produced by the va- 
riety of pause, and in the force of long and linked passages, 
as well as of insulated lines, is less slavish than the one, and 
less arbitrary than the other ? Unlike rhyme, its point is 
more that of thought than of language; unlike blank 
verse, it never can, however managed, degenerate into heavy 
prose. Such is parallelism, which generally forms the differ- 
ential quality of the poetry of Scripture, although there are 
many passages in it destitute of this aid, and which yet, in 
the spirit they breathe, and the metaphors by which they are 
garnished, are genuine and high poetry. And there can be 
little question, that in the parallelism of the Hebrew tongue 
we can trace many of the peculiarities of modern writing, 
and in it find the fountain of the rhythm, the pomp, and 
antithesis, which lend often such grace, and always such 
energy, to the style of Johnson, of Junius, of Burke, of 
Hall, of Chalmers — indeed, of most writers who rise to the 
grand swells of prose-poetry. 

Ere closing this chapter, we may mention one other cu- 
rious use of parallelism by the Jewish poets. As it is, con- 
fessedly, the key to the tower of Hebrew verse, and as, in 
one species of it, between every two distichs, and every two 
parts of a sentence, there is an alternation, like the backward 
and forward movements of a dance, so the sacred writers 
keep up a similar interchange between the vast concave 
above and the world below. Mark this in the history of the 
creation. At first, there is darkness above and darkness be- 
low. Then, as the earth is enlightened, the sky is illumined 
too ; the earth is brought forth from the grave of chaos ; the 
heaven is uplifted in its "terrible crystal;" and, ere the 
earth is inhabited, the air is peopled. Again, as to their 
present state, the heaven is Grod's throne, the earth his foot- 
stool — ^grandeur sits on the one, insignificance cowers on the 
other ; power resides above in the meteors, the storms, the 
stars, the lightnings, the sunbeams — passive weakness shrinks 
and trembles below. The one is a place, nay, a womb of 
glory, from which angels glide, and Deity himself at times 
descends. The other is a tomb, an Aceldama, a Golgotha : 
and yet, though the one, in comparison with the other, be so 
grovelling and mean, taken in connection with the other, it 
catches and reflects a certain degree of glory. It has no 



OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 55 

light in itself, but the sun condescends to shine upon it, to 
gild its streams and to touch its mountains, as with the 
finger of God. It is a footstool, but it is Grod's footstool. 
It is a tomb, but a tomb set in the blue of heaven. It has 
no power in itself, but it witnesses and feels the energies of 
the upper universe. It is not the habitation of demons, or 
angels, or God ; but angels rest their feet upon its hills, de- 
mons walk to and fro through its wastes, and God has been 
heard sometimes in its groves or gardens, in the cool wind 
of the day. Hence, while righteousness looks down from 
heaven, truth springs from earth. Hence, the prophet, after 
saying, " Give ear, O ye heavens ! and I will speak," adds, 
" and hear, earth ! the words of my mouth." So much for 
this mighty prophetical dance or parallelism between earth 
and heaven.* 



CHAPTER II. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY. 

At ihe hazard of retreading here and there our own steps in 
the Introduction, we must speak separately of the general 
characteristics of Hebrew poets. To the first we intend to 
name of these, we have referred already — it is their figura- 
tive language. Like the swan on still St. Mary's Lake, each 
thought " floats douMe," — each birth is of twins. It is so 
with all high thoughts, except, perhaps, those of geometrical 
abstraction. The proof of great thoughts is, will they trans- 
late into figured and sensuous expression % will nature recog- 
nize, own, and clothe them, as if they were her own ? or must 
they stand, small, shivering, and naked, before her unopened 
door ? But here we must make a distinction. Many thoughts 
find, after beating about for, natural analogies — they strain a 
tribute. The thought of genius precedes its word, only as 
the flash of the lightning the roar of the near thunder ; nay, 
they often seem identical. ^Now, the images of Scripture are 

* See, on this subject, Herder's •' Spirit of Hebrew Poetry." 



^6 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 

peculiarly of this description. The connection between them 
and their wedded thoughts seems necessary. With this is 
closely connected the naturalness of Scripture figure. No 
critical reproach is more common, or more indiscriminate, 
than that which imputes to writers want of nature. For na- 
ture is often a conventional term. What is as natural to one 
man as to breathe, would be, and seems, to another, the 
spasm of imbecile agony. Consequently, the ornate writer 
cannot ofte;n believe himself ornate, cannot help thinking and 
speaking in figure, and is astonished to hear elaboration im- 
puted to passages which have been literally each the work of 
an hour. But all modern styles are more or less artificial. 
Their fire is in part a false fire. The spirit of those unnatu- 
rally excited ages, rendered feverish by luxuries, by stimu- 
lants, by uncertainties, by changes, and by raging speculation, 
has blown sevenfold their native ardor, and rendered its ac- 
curate analysis difficult. Whereas, the fire of the Hebrews — • 
a people living on corn, water, or milk — sitting under their 
vine, but seldom tasting its juice — dwelling alone, and not 
reckoned among the nations — surrounded by customs and 
manners ancient and unchangeable as the mountains, — a fire 
fed chiefly by the still aspects of their scenery, the force of 
their piety, the influences of their climate, the forms of their 
worship, and the memories of their past — was a fire as natural 
as that of a volcano. The figures used are just the burning 
coals of that flame, and come forth in brief, impetuous, im- 
patient volleys. There is scarcely any artifice or even art in 
their use Hebrew art went no farther than to construct a 
simple form of versification. The management of figures, in 
what numbers they should be introdllfeed, from what objects 
drawn, to what length expanded, how often repeated, and 
how so set as to tell most powerfully, was beyond or beneath 
it. Enough that the crater of the Hebrew basin was never 
empty, that the fire was always there ready to fill every 
channel presented to it, and to change every object it met 
into itself. 

The figures of the Hebrews were very numerous. Their 
country, indeed, was limited in extent, and the objects it con- 
tained, consequently, rather marked than manifold. But the 
" mind is its own place," and from that land flowing with milk 
and honey, what a rich Jierbarium^ aviary, r)ienagerie^ have 
the bards of the Bible collected and consecrated to God! 



OF HEBREW POETRY. 



59 



We recall not our former word, that they have ransacked 
a-eation in the sweep of their genius ; for all the bold features 
and main elements of the world, enhanced, too, by the force 
of enthusiasm, and shown in a light which is not of the 
earth, are to be found in them. Their images are never 
forced out, nor are they sprinkled over the page with a chari- 
ness, savoring more of poverty than of taste, but hurry forth, 
thick and intertangled, like sparks from the furnace. Each 
figure, too, proceeding as it does, not from the playful mint 
of fancy, but from the solemn forge of imagination, seems 
sanctified in its birth, an awful and holy, as well as a lovely 
thing. The flowers laid on God's altar have indeed been 
gathered in the gardens and wildernesses of earth, but the 
dew and the divinity of Heaven are resting on every bud and 
blade. It seems less a human tribute than a selection from 
the Godlike rendered back to God. 

We name, as a second characteristic of Hebrew poetry, 
its simplicity. This approaches the degree of artlessness. 
The Hebrew poets were, indeed, full-grown and stern men, 
but they united with this quality a certain childlikeness, for 
which, at least, in all its simplicity, we may search other 
literatures in vain. We find this in their selection of topics. 
Subjects exceedingly delicate, and, to fastidious civilization, 
offensive, are occasionally alluded to with a plainness of 
speech springing from perfect innocence of intention. The 
language of Scripture, like the finger of the sun, touches un- 
eleanness, and remains pure. " Who can touch pitch, and 
not be defiled ?" The quiet, holy hand of a Moses or an 
Ezekiel can. The proof is, that none of the descriptions 
they give us of sin have ever inflamed the most inflammable 
imagination. Men read the 20th chapter of Leviticus, and 
the 23d of Ezekiel, precisely as they witness the unwitting 
actions of a child ; nay, they feel their moral sense strength- 
ened and purified by the exposures of vice which such pas- 
sages contain. The Jewish writers manifest this simplicity, 
too, in the extreme width and homeliness of their imagery. 
They draw their images from all that interests man, or that 
bears the faintest reflection of the face of God. The willow 
by the water-courses, and the cedar on Lebanon — the ant 
and the leviathan — the widow's cruse of oil and Sinai's fount 
of fire — the sower overtaking the reaper, and God coming 
from Teman and from Paran — Jael's tent-nail, and Elijah's 



5o GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 

fiery chariot — boys and girls playing in the streets of Jeru- 
salem — and those angels that are spirits, and those ministers 
that are flames of fire ; yea, meaner objects than any of these 
are selected impartially to illustrate the great truths which 
are the subjects of their song. The path of every true poet 
should be the path of the sun rays, which, secure in their 
own purity and directness, pass, fearless as the spirit of a 
child, through all deep, dark, intricate, or unholy places — 
equally illustrate the crest of a serpent and the wing of a 
bird — pause on the summit of an ant-hillock, as on the brow 
of Mont Blanc — take up as a "little thing"»alike the crater 
and the shed cone of the pine — and after they have, in one 
wide charity, embraced all shaped and sentient things, ex- 
pend their waste strength and beauty upon the inane space 
beyond. Thus does the imagination of the Hebrew bard 
count no subject too low, and none too high, for its compre- 
hensive and incontroUable sweep. 

Unconsciousness we hold to be the highest style of sim- 
plicity and of genius. It has been said, indeed, by a high 
authority (the late John Sterling), that men of genius are 
conscious, not of what is peculiar in the individual, but of 
what is universal in the race; of what characterizes not a 
man,- but Man — not of their own individual genius, but of 
God, as moving within their minds. Yet, what in reality is 
this, but the unconsciousness for which we would contend ? 
When we say that men of genius, in their highest moods, 
are unconscious, we mean, not that these men become the 
mere tubes through which a foreign influence descends, but 
that certain lofty emotions or ideas so fill and possess them, 
«s to produce temporary forge tfulness of themselves, except 
as the passive though intelligent instruments of the feeling 
or the thought. It is true, that afterwards self may suggest 
the reflection — " the fact that we have been selected to 
receive and convey such melodies proves our breadth and 
fitness ; it is from the oak, not the reed, that the wind elicits 
its deepest music." But, in the first place, this thought 
never takes place at the same time with the true afflatus, 
and is almost inconsistent with its presence. It is a mere 
after inference ; an inference, secondly, which is not always 
made ; nay, thirdly, an inference which is often rejected, 
when the poet ofl the stool feels tempted to regard with sus- 
picion or shuddering disgust the results of his raptured hour 



OF HEBREIV POETRY. 6 1 

of inspiration. Milton seems to have shrunk back at the 
retrospect of the height he had reached in the " Paradise 
Lost," and preferred his " Paradise Regained." Shakspere, 
on the other hand, having wrought his tragic miracles, under 
a more entire self-abandonment, becomes, in his Sonnets, 
owing to a reflex act of sagacity, aware of what feats he had 
done. Bunjan is carried on through all the stages of his 
immortal Pilgrimage like a child in the leading-strings of 
his nurse ; but, after looking back upon its completed 
course, begins, with all the harmless vanity of a child (see 
his prefatory poem to the second part), to a-ow over the 
achievement. Thus all gifted spirits do best when they 
'• know not what they do." The boy Tell 

" Was great, nor knew how great he was.'- 

But if this be true of men of genius, it is still more charac- 
teristic of the Poets of the Bible ; for they possess perfect 
passive reception in the moment of their utterance, and have 
given no symptoms of that after self-satisfaction which it were 
hard to call, and harder to distinguish from, literary vanity. 
The head reels at the thought of Isaiah weighing his '' Bur- 
dens" over against the odes of Deborah or David; or of 
Ezekiel measuring his intellectual stature with that of 
Daniel. Like many evening rivers of different bulks and 
channels, but descending from one chain of mountains, swol- 
len by one rain, and meeting in one valley, do those mighty 
Prophets lift up their unequal, unemulous, unconscious, but 
harmonious and heaven-seeking voices. 

We notice next the boldness^ which is not inferior to the 
beauty of their speech. They use liberties, and dare darings, 
which make us tremble. One is reminded, while reading 
their words, of the unhinged intellect of the aged King of 
England, loosened from all law, delivered from all fear, hav- 
ing cast off every weight of custom, conventionalism, even 
reason, ranging at large, a fire-winged energy, free of the 
universe, exposing all the abuses of society, and asking 
strange and unbidden questions at the Deity himself. Thus, 
not in frenzy, but in the height of a privilege of their pecu- 
liar power, do the Hebrew Prophets often invert the torrent 
of -their argument and expostulation, curving it up from 
earth to heaven — from Man to Grod. Hear the words of 
Jeremiah — - the Hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in 



62 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 

time of trouble, why shouldst thou be as a stranger in the 
laud, and as a wayfaring man, that turneth aside to tarry 
for a night? Why shouldst thou be as a man astonied. as 
a mighty man that cannot save ? .Do not abhor us, for thy 
name's sake. Do not disgrace tJw throne of thy glory. '^^ Or 
hear Job — '- 1 know now that God hath overthrown me, and 
hath compassed me with his net. Behold I cry out of wrongs 
but I am not heard. I cry aloud, but there is 7io judgment. 
Why do ye persecute me as God., and are not satisfied with 
my flesh ?" Or listen to Jonah's irony, thrown up in the 
very nostrils of Jehovah — " I knew that thou art a gracious 
God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and 
repentest thee of the evil ; therefore, now, Lord, take, I 
beseech thee, my life from me." These expressions, amid 
many similar, suggest the memory of those sublimest of un- 
inspired words — 

" Ye heavens, 
If ye do love old men, if your sweet sway 
Hallow obedience, \i yourselves are old, 
Make it your cause, avenge me of my daughters." 

Surely, there is in such words no irreverence or blasphemy. 
Nay, on those moments, when prayer and prophecy transcend 
themselves, when the divine within, by the agony of its 
earnestness, is stung up almost to the measure and the sta- 
ture of the divine above — when the soul rises in its majestic 
wrath, like " thunder heard remote " — is it not then that men 
have reached all but their highest point of elevation possible 
to them on earth, and felt as if they saw 

" God face to face, nor yet were blasted by his brow 1" 

Very different, however, this spirit, from that of some modern 
poets, who have 

"Rushed in where angels fear to tread;" 

and, under the mask of fiction, have taken the opportunity of 
venting their spleen or personal disgust in the face of God. 
Without entering on the great enigma of the " Faust," or 
venturing to deny that Goethe's real purpose was reverence, 
we question much if the effect of his opening scenes in hea- 
ven, be not to produce a very opposite and pernicious feeling. 
Byron, again, at one time stands in the august presence cham- 
ber, like a sulky, speechless fiend, and, at another, asks small 



OP HEBREW POETRY. 6;^ 

uneasy questions, like an ill-conditioned child. Dante and 
Milton alone, on this high platform, unite a thorough con- 
sciousness of themselves, with a profound reverence for him 
in whose presence they stand ; they bend before, but do not 
shrivel up in his sight ; they come slowly and softly, but do 
not steal, into his presence. We must not stop to do more 
than allude to those modern caricaturists of Milton and Byron, 
who, in the guise of prodigious pietism, display a self-igno- 
rance and self-conceit which are almost blasphemy, and who, 
as their plumes vain-gloriously bristle up and broaden in the 
eye of Deity, and as their harsh ambitious scream rises in his 
ear, present a spectacle which we know not whether to call 
more ludicrous or more horrible. 

But the boldness of the Hebrew bards, which we pane- 
gyrize, extends to more than their expressions of religious 
emotion — it extends to all their sentiment, to their style, 
and to their bearing. " They know not to give flattering 
titles ; in so doing," they feel " that their Maker would soon 
take them away." With God vertical over their head in all 
their motions, miserable courtiers and sycophants they would 
have made, even if such base avenues to success had been 
always open before them. They are the stern rebukers of 
wickedness in high places, the unhired advocates of the op- 
pressed and the poor ; and fully do they purchase a title to 
the charge of being " troublers of Israel," disturbing it as 
the hurricane the elements and haunts of the pestilence. 
All classes, from the King of Samaria to the drunkard of 
Ephraim — 'from the Babylonian Lucifer, son of the morn- 
ing, to the meanest, mincing, and wanton-eyed daughter 
of Zion, with her round tire, like the moon— kings, priests, 
peasantry, goldsmiths, and carpenters — men and women, coun- 
trymen and foreigners, must listen and tremble, when they 
smite with their hand and stamp with Iheir foot. In them 
the moral conscience of the people found an incarnation, and 
stood at the corner of every street, to deplore degeneracy, to 
expose imposture, to blast the pretences and the minions of 
despotism, to denounce every kind and degree of sin, and to 
point, with a finger which never shook, to the unrepealed 
code of Moses, and to the law written on the fleshly tablets 
of the heart, as the standards of rectitude. Where, in mo- 
dern ages, can we find a class exerting or aspiring to such a 
province and such a power ? Individuals of prophetic mood 
5 



64 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 

we have had and have. We have had a Milton, " wasting 
his life " in loud or silent protest against that age of " evil 
days and evil tongues " on which he had fallen. We have 
had a Cowper, lifting up " Expostulations," not unheard, to 
his degraded country. We have had an Edward Irving, his 
" neck clothed with thunder," and his loins girt with the 
" spirit and the power of Elias," pealing out harsh truth, till 
he sank down, wearied and silent, in death. We have had a 
poor, bewildered Shelley, with eyes open to the disease, shut 
to the true remedy, sincere, beautiful, and lost, as a lunatic 
angel, yet with such melody in many of his words, that all 
men wept to hear them. We have still a Thomas Garlyle, 
who, from the study, where he might have trained himself 
for a great artist, has come forth, and, standing by the way- 
side, has uttered the old laws of justice and of retribution, 
with such force and earnestness that they seem new and 
burning " burdens," as if from the mountains of Israel. But 
we have not, and never have had a class, anointed and conse- 
crated by the hand of God to the utterance of eternal truth, 
as immediately taught them from behind and above — speak- 
ing, moving, looking, gesticulating, and acting, " as they were 
moved by the Holy Grhost." Our poets have, in general, 
been beautiful mirrors of the beautiful, elegant, and tuneful 
minstrels that could play well on an instrument, and that 
were to the world as a " very lovely song," — what else our 
Rogerses and Moores ?— not men persecuted and chased into 
action and utterance, by the apparition behind them of 
the true. Our statesmen, as a class, have been cold tem^ 
porizers, mistaking craft for wisdom, success for merit, and 
the putting off the evil day for success. Our mental philos- 
ophers have done little else than translate into ingenious jar- 
gon the eldest sentiments and intuitive knowledge of human- 
ity — they have taught men to lisp of the Infinite by new 
methods, and to babble of the Eternal in terms elaborately 
and artistically feeble. Our preachers, as a body, have been 
barely faithful to their brief, and they have found that brief 
in the compass of a confession, rather than in the pages of 
the Bible, shown and expounded in the light of the great 
God-stricken soul within. But our prophets, where are 
they? Where many who resemble those wild, wandering, but 
holy flames of fire, which once ran along the highways, the 
hills, and the market-places of Palestine? Instead, what 




ELIJAH BAI6ING THE DEAD CHILD. 



OF HEBREW POETRY. 67 

find we ? For the most part, an assortment of all varieties 
of scribbling, scheming, speculating, and preaching machines, 
the most active of whose movements form the strongest anti- 
thesis to true life. Even the prophetic men among us display 
rather the mood than the insight of prophecy — rather its 
fire than its light, and rather its fury than its fire — rather a 
yearning after, than a feeling of, the stoop of the descending 
Grod. We are compelled to take the complaint of the an 
cient seer, with a yet bitterer feeling than his — 

" Our signs we do not now behold : 
There is not us among 
A prophet more, nor any one 
That knows the time how long." 

And we must even return, and sit at the feet of those barda 
of Israel, who, apart from their supernatural pretensions — 
as teachers, as poets, as truthful and earnest men — stand as 
yet alone, unsurmounted and unapproached — tho Himalayan 
mountains of mankind. 

Speaking out fearless sentiments, their language is " loud 
and bold." It abounds in personifications, interrogations, 
apostrophes, hyperboles, sudden and violent transitions, 
figures begun to be broken off, fieree, insulated, and ragged 
exclamations, all those outlets of strong emotion which rhe- 
toric has since been occupied in measuring and squaring. It 
is a compound of the language of poetry, oratory, and prayer. 
Its vehemence, ardor, simplicity, picturesque and poetic cha- 
racter, as well as its divine worth, have carried it safe through 
every ordeal of translation ; it has mixed with the stream of 
every language uninjured, nay, has finely colored the literary 
style of Europe. The charm which Scripture quotation adds 
to writing, let those tell who have read Milton, Bunyan, 
Burke, Foster, Southey, Croly, Carlyle, Macaulay, yea, and 
even Byron, all of whom have sown their pages with this 
"orient pearl," and brought thus an impulse from divine 
inspiration, to add to the effect of their own. Extracts from 
the Bible always attest and vindicate their origin. They 
nerve what else in the sentences in which they occur is 
pointless ; they clear a space for themselves, and cast a wide 
glory around the page where they are found. Taken from 
the classics of the Mart, all hearts vibrate more or less 
strongly to their voice. It is even as David felt of old to- 



SS GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 

ward the sword of Goliath, when he visited the high priest, 
and said, " There is none like that, give it me ;"' so writers of 
true taste and sympathies feel on great occasions, when they 
have certain thoughts and feelings to express, a longing for 
that sharp two-edged sword, and an irresistible inclination to 
cry, " None like that, give it us ; this right Damascus blade 
alone can cut the way of our thought into full utterance and 
victory." 

And did the bearing of those inspired men correspond 
with their sentiments and speech ? It did. The Hebrew 
prophet, in his highest form, was a solitary and savage man, 
residing with lions when he was not waylaying kings, on 
whose brow the scorching sun of Syria had charactered its 
fierce and swarthy hue, and whose dark eye swam with a fine 
insanity, gathered from solitary communings with the sand, 
the sea, the mountains, and the sky, as well as with the light 
of a divine afflatus. He had lain in the cockatrice's den ; 
he had put his hand on the hole of the asp ; he had spent 
the night on lion-surrounded trees, and slept and dreamed 
amid their hungry roar ; he had swam in the Dead Sea, or 
haunted, like a ghost, those dreary caves which lowered 
around it ; he had drank of the melted snow on the top of 
Lebanon ] at Sinai, he had traced and trod on the burning 
footprints of Jehovah ; he had heard messages at midnight, 
which made his hair to arise, and his skin to creep ; he had 
been wet with the dews of the night, and girt by the demons 
of the wilderness ; he had been tossed up and down, like a 
leaf, upon the strong and veering storm of his inspiration. 
He was essentially a lonely man, cut off, by gulf upon gulf, 
from tender ties and human associations. He had no home ; 
a wife he might be permitted to marry, but, as in the case of 
Hosea, the permission might only be to him a curse, and to 
his people an emblem, and when (as in the case of Ezekiel) 
her death became necessary as a sign, she died, and left him 
in the same austere seclusion in which he had existed before. 
The power which came upon him cut, by its fierce coming, 
all the threads which bound him to his kind, tore him from 
the plough, or from the pastoral solitude, and hurried him to 
the desert, and thence to the foot of the throne, or to the 
wheel of the triumphal chariot. And how startling his com- 
ing to crowned or conquering guilt ! Wild from the wilder- 
ness, bearded like its lion-lord ; the fury of God glaring in 



OP HEBREW POETRY. 



69 



his eye ; his mantle heaving to his heaving breast ; his words 
stern, swelling, tinged on their edges with a terrible poetry ; 
his attitude dignity ; his gesture power— how did he burst 
upon the astonished gaze ; how swift and solemn his en- 
trance ; how short and spirit-like his stay ; how dreamy, yet 
distinctly dreadful, the impression made by his words long 
after they had ceased to tingle on the ears ; and how myste- 
rious the solitude into which he seemed to melt away ! Poet, 
nay prophet, were a feeble name for such a being. He was 
a momentary incarnation— a meteor kindled at the eye, and 
blown on the breath, of the Eternal. 

To much of this description all the prophets answer ; but 
we have had in our eye principally Elijah, whom God testi- 
fied to be the greatest of the family, by raising him to heaven. 
Sudden as a vision of the night, he stands up before Ahab, 
the evil King of Israel, and the historian no more thinks of 
recounting his ancestry, than he would of tracing that of a 
dream. JSe delivers his message, and instantly retires from 
the scene. We see him, however, a little afterwards, in a 
poor widow's dwelling ; and lo ! he breathes upon her hand- 
ful of meal, and blesses her cruse of oil, and they are multi- 
plied a thousandfold ; and when death stops the dearer foun- 
tain of her son's life, he has but to bow himself three times 
upon the child, and the spring shut up softly opens again. 
He appears after this on Carmel — meet pedestal for a statue 
so sublime ! He had previously burst a second time into 
Ahab's presence, and, careless of the exclamation, " Art thou 
he that troublest Israel?" had challenged him, and Baal, his 
god, and Baal's prophets, four hundred and fifty, and the 
prophets of the groves, four hundred, to meet him on Carmel, 
and have the question of the land and of the age — is Baal or 
is Jehovah God? — there decided, by an appeal to the ancient, 
the chainless, the impartial element of fire. It is the ques- 
tion of this age, too ! Show us the fire of heaven, still burn- 
ing and vestal, in any church and it sufficeth us ; for Christ 
came to send fire upon eartn, and what will we, if it have 
gone out in white and barren ashes? The God that an- 
swereth by fire answereth Elijah, and the sun, his archer, 
loosened a ray which consumed burnt-sacrifice, wood, stones, 
dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. We 
see him next, a girt and glorious homicide, standing at the 
brook Kishon, and there, with knife moving to the music of 



70 



GENERAL CHARACTERIST CS 



God's voice, slaying the false prophets, " heaps upon heaps." 
We again find him compelling clouds and rain from the 
brassy sky, and, " through fire and water," running before 
Ahab's chariot, to the entrance of Jezreel. "We follow him, 
then, a fugitive from Jezebel's vengeance, on his way toward 
Horeb, the mount of Grod ; fed by an angel ; lodging in a 
cave ; hearing afar off the voice of Jehovah ; watching the 
couriers of the divine coming — the wind, the earthquake, the 
fire ; and at last made aware of that coming itself, in the still 
small voice, and covering his face with a mantle, as he came 
out to the mouth of the cave. Instructed in the duties he 
had to perform during his brief remaining career, cheered by 
the tidings of seven thousand who had not bent the knee to 
Baal, and prepared by that celestial colloquy for the great 
change at hand, we see him returning to the haunts of men 
— anointing Elisha his successor — once more " finding" 
guilty Ahab, who trembles in his presence more than if the 
ghost of Naboth had stood up before him — and, as his last 
public act, bringing down new forks of flame upon the fifties 
and their captains, who in vain sought him to prophesy health 
and life to the dying Ahaziah. We see him, then, turning 
his slow majestic steps towards the Jordan, oft reverting his 
eyes to the mountains of his native land, which he is leaving 
for ever ; shaking off by his stride like gossamer the inquisi- 
tive sons of the prophets, till Elisha and he are seen moving 
on alone ; his eye waxing brighter, and his step quicker, and 
his port loftier as he talks to his companion, and approaches 
the stream ; standing for a moment silent on its brink — lift- 
ing then his mantle, wrapping it together, smiting the waters, 
and they part hither and thither ; resuming, on the other side, 
the high converse, but now, with eager glances cast ever and 
anon onwards ; at length, meeting the fiery chariot, mounting 
it, as a king his car, and carried, without a moment's delay, 
in a rushing whirlwind upwards-r— his mantle falling, and 
Elisha exclaiming, " My father, my father, the chariot of 
Israel, and the horsemen thereof !" We may not farther or 
fully follow his triumphal progress, but, doubtless, as like a 
prince he had mounted the chariot, so with princse-like ma- 
jesty did he direct the fiery steeds, gaze around on the peo- 
pled wilderness of worlds, outstrip the comet's glowing wheel, 
rise above the sun, and the sun's sun, and every system from 
which the sun's system is visible, cross the firmaments of 



OP HEBREW POETRY. 7 1 



space, pass through the gates into the city, enter amid the 
rising, welcoming, and wondering firstborn of heaven, and 
at last merge in the engilfing glory of the great white 
throne. 

Such honor have not all God's saints, nor have had all his 
prophets. But surely here the dignity of the prophetic office 
came to its height, when, in the fulness of its discharge, it 
swelled up into heaven, and when he, who, in the native gran- 
deur of his commission, had walked among men as a being of 
another race, was lifted up before his time, like a pearl from 
the dust, and added to an immortal and sinless company. 

We mention, as the last general characteristic of HebreTV 
poetry, its high moral tone and constant religious reference. 
Without occupying the full position of Dr. Johnson, in his 
celebrated ex cathedra and a priori sentence against sacred 
poetry, we are forced to admit that, of sacred poetry, in its 
higher acceptation, we have had little, and that our sacred 
poets are few. There are, we think, but three poets — Dante, 
Milton, and Cowper — entitled at once to the terms sacred 
and great. Giles and Phineas Fletcher, James and Robert 
Montgomery, Milman. Pollock, French, and Keble, are sacred 
poets, and much of their poetry is true and beautiful ; but 
the shy epithet "great" will hardly alight on any one of their 
heads. Spenser, Cowley, Pope, Addison, Scott, Wordsworth, 
Wilson, Coleridge, and Southey, have all written sacrei 
poems (Coleridge's Hymn to Mont Blanc, and Scott's Hymn 
of Rebecca, in Ivanhoe, are surpassed only by the Hebrew 
bards) ; but none of them is properly a sacred poet. For 
some of the best of our sacred verses, we are indebted to such 
men as Christopher Smart, John Logan, and William Knox, 
Of the tribe of ordinary hymn writers, whose drawl and lisp- 
ing drivel — whose sickening sentimentalism — whose uninten- 
tional blasphemies of familiarity with divine things and per- 
sons — whose profusion of such fulsome epithets as " sweet 
Jesus," " dear Lord," " dear Christ," &c., render them so un- 
deservedly popular, what need we say, unless it be to express 
our surprise that a stern Scottish taste, accustomed to admire 
the " Dies Irae," our own rough but manly version of the 
Psalms, and our own simple and unpretending Paraphrases, 
should dream of introducing into our sanctuaries the trash 
commonly known as hymns. The writer of sacred poetry 
should be himself a sacred poet, f 3r none else can continuously, 



72 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 



or at large, write what both the critic and the Christian will 
value, though for different reasons — the Christian for its 
spirit and tendency, the critic for its thorough artistic adap- 
tation to the theme. 

The Hebrew poet was nothing, if not sacred. To him, 
the poetical and the religious were almost the same. Song 
was the form instinctively assumed by all the higher moods 
of his worship. He was not surprised into religious emotion 
and poetry by the influence of circumstances, nor stung into 
it by the pressure of remorse. He was not religious only 
when the organ was playing, nor most so — like Burns and 
Byron — on a sunshiny day. Religion was with him an ha- 
bitual feeling, and from the joy or the agony of that feeling 
poetry broke out irrepressibly. To him, the question '• Are 
you in a religious mood to-day ?" had been as absurd as " Are 
you alive to-day ?" for all his moods — whether high as heaven 
or low as hell — whether wretched as the penitence of David, 
or triumphant as the rapture of Isaiah — were tinged with the 
religious element. From Grod he sank, or up to him he soared. 
The grand theocracy around ruled all the soul and all the 
song of the bard. Wherever he stood — under the silent 
starry canopy, or in the congregation of the faithful — musing 
in solitary spots, or smiting, with high, hot, rebounding hand, 
the loud cymbal — his feeling was, " How dreadful is this 
place ! this is none other but the house of God, and this is 
the gate of heaven." In him, surrounded by sacred influences, 
haunted by sacred recollections, moving through a holy land, 
and overhung by a heavenly presence, religion became a pas- 
sion, a patriotism, and a poetry. Hence the sacred song of 
the Hebrews stand alone ; and hence we may draw the de- 
duction, that' its equal we shall never see again, till again 
religion enshrine the earth with an atmosphere as it then 
enshrined Palestine — till poets are the organs, not only of 
their personal belief, but of the general sentiment around 
them, and have become but the high priests in a vast sanctu- 
ary, where all shall be worshippers, because all is felt to be 
divine. How this high and solemn reference to the Supreme 
Intelligence and Great Whole comes forth in all the varied 
forms of Hebrew poetry ! Is it the pastoral ? — The Lord is 
the shepherd. Is it elegy ? — It bewails his absence. Is it 
ode ? — It cries aloud for his return, or shouts his praise. Is 
it the historical ballad ? — It recounts his deeds. Is it tho 



OF HEBREW POETEY. 75 

penitential psalm ? — Its climax is, " Against Thee only have 
I sinned." Is it the didactic poem ? — Running down through 
the world, like a scythed chariot, and hewing down before it 
all things as vanity, it clears the way to the final conclusion, 
" Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole 
duty of man." Is it a " burden," tossed, as from a midnight 
mountain, by the hand of lonely seer, toward the lands of 
Egypt and Babylon 1 — It is the burden of the Lord ; his the 
handful of devouring fire flung by the fierce prophet. Is it 
apologue, or emblem ? — God's meaning lies in the hollow of 
the parable ; God's eye glares the " terrible crystal " over the 
rushing wheels. Even the love-canticle seems to rise above 
itself, and behold a greater than Solomon, and a fairer than 
his Egyptian spouse, are here. Thus, from their poetry, as 
from a thousand mirrors, flashes back the one awful face of 
their God. 



CHAPTER III. 



VARIETIES OP HEBREW POETRY. 



It is common for a new writer on any subject to commence 
his work with open, or with gently insinuated, depreciation 
of those who have preceded him, or at least, in the course of 
it, to " damn them with faint praise," or to hint and hesitate 
out strong but suppressed dislike. Not in conformity with 
this custom, we propose to commence this chapter by can- 
didly characterizing the principal writers on Hebrew poetry 
with whom we are acquainted. 

By far the most generally known of those writers is 
Bishop Lowth, the fourth edition of whose " Lectures on 
the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews," translated from the 
Latin by G. Gregory, F. R. S., with notes by Michaelis and * 
others, now lies before us. To use a term which this author 
himself employs ad nauseam^ Lowth's book is a very " ele- 
gant" production. It is written in a round, fluent, and per- 
spicuous style ; abounds in learning and ingenious criticism ; 
is full to overflowing of specimens selected, and in general 
re-translated, from the Hebrew bards ; showsa warm love for 
their more prominent excellencies, and an intimate know- 



76 



VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 



ledge of their mechanical structure ; and did good service 
for their fame when first published. To say, however, thai 
it is ever more than " elegant," or ever rises to the " height 
of its great argument," were to compliment it too highly. 
It contains, indeed, much judicious criticism, some good 
writing, and a few touches of highly felicitous panegyric ; 
but, as a whole, it is tame almost to mediocrity — squares the 
Hebrew poetry too much by the standard of the (xreek and 
Latin classics — displays little or no kindred genius — dilutes 
and deadens the portions of the Bible it professes to render 
into English verse — bears too decidedly the stamp of the 
eighteenth century — and does not at all fulfil its own ex- 
pressed ideal, — " He who would feel the peculiar and interior 
elegances of the Hebrew poetry must imagine himself ex- 
actly situated as the persons for whom it was written, or 
even as the writers themselves — he is to feel as a Hebrew, to 
read Hebrew as the Hebrews would have read it." Lowth 
is very little of a Hebrew, and the point of view he occupies 
is far below the level of the "hills of holiness." His criti- 
cism bears not even the proportion to the subject which 
Pope's " Messiah" does to its original ; it wants subtilty, 
power, and abandonment. Much of his general preliminary 
matter is now obsolete, and the account which he gives of 
the individual writers is meagre. He supplies a series of 
anatomical sketches, not of living portraits. He is to David 
and Isaiah what Warton was to Shakspeare, or Blair to Homer 
and Virgil. His translator has not been able altogether to 
overcome the air of stifi"ness which adheres to all English 
versions from the Latin. Nor do the notes by Michaelis 
add much to the book's value. They have, indeed, much 
learning, but their literary criticism is alike despicable 
and profane. " Ezekiel," says our learned Theban, " does 
not strike with admiration, nor exhibit any trait of sub- 
limity." Truly, over such a critic all the wheels of Chebar 
would roll in vain, for what impression can be made on in- 
sensate and infidel dust ? Even a mule would be awestruck 
in the gorge of Glencoe, but a mule is only a relation to 
Michaelis. His translator sounds a deeper deep, and actu- 
ally accuses Ezekiel of the bathos ! 

Such was the criticism of the past age. Rarely did it 
reach, in any of its altitudes of praise, a term higher than 
the aforesaid " elegant" — a term which, while accurately 



VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 



77 



measuring Pope and Addison, looks, when connected with 
Moses and Isaiah, ludicrously inadequate. The age, of 
which this was the superlative, could scarcely measure the 
poetry of that which saw and sung the highest beauty and 
the loftiest grandeur, embracing each other in the Temple 
under the shadow of 

" Jebovah thundering out of Zion, throned 
Between the cherubim." 

Lowth, to do him justice, deserved better company than 
Michaelis or Gregory. His step round the awful sanctities 
of Hebrew song is the light and trembling step of a timid 
lover ; and, for the sake of his love and sincerity, much 
must be forgiven him, even although the oblivion demanded 
for his faults should at last ingulf his merits too. Yet, as 
an inscription on a tombstone is often read, and is sometimes 
spared, for its Latinity, it may be hoped that so many fine 
and rolling periods, in the tongue of Cicero, shall long resist 
decay, even after they have ceased to be regarded with the 
former degree of respect and admiration. 

Herder was a man of " another spirit ;" and his report of 
the good land of Hebrew poetry, compared to Lowth's, is 
that of a Caleb or Joshua, to that of an ordinary Jewish 
spy. He does not climb from Parnassus to Lebanon, but 
descends on it from the " mountains of the East" — from a 
keen admiration and intimate knowledge of the spirit and 
genius of all oriental tribes and poets. He " feels as a He- 
brew, and has read Hebrew as the Hebrews read it." He 
has himself a winged soul, and can transport his reader 
along with him into the very heart of a former age, enabling 
him to realize its old life, to feel its old habits hanging soft- 
ly around him, to throb with its old ambitions, to talk 
fluently its old language, and to climb as far up as the mists 
of its old prejudices. Thus to plunge into the past was 
competent only to a " diver lean and strong ;" and Herder, 
BO far, has done it nobly. He has developed, in a masterly 
manner, the sources from which Hebrew poetry sprang ; the 
ideas of Cod, nature, man, and the future world, which it 
represented, and the influences radiated upon it from the 
lieat of the Hebrew climate and the impassioned tempera- 
ment of the Hebrew bosom. He has defended, too, with 
force and gusto, the form of Hebrew versification, and the 



78 



VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 



copiousness of its diction. His versions of particular pas- 
sages are always spirited and poetical. Above all, he catches 
fire from his theme, and the commentary is often only a 
" little lower " than the text. Still, the book is a fragment. 
The author never filled up its outline. Neither the larger 
nor lesser prophets are included in it. A shade of neolo- 
gism will always mar its effect on the popular British mind. 
Nor will that be enhanced, when it is known that the author, 
ere his death, modified many of its views, relinquished, in a 
great measure, his taste for the simple, primitive, and un- 
conscious kinds of poetry, and adopted, in exchange, a pre- 
ference for cultured and classical song. Such, however, is 
the power of poetic enthusiasm, that the heretic Herder 
dismisses his intelligent readers with a profounder reverence 
for the Scriptures, as well as a keener sense of their poetic 
beauty, than the British bishop, nor can his work ever cease 
to fill a niche, and attract admirers of its own. It is a true 
and a beautiful thing, and must be a "joy for ever." 

With the third of the three works, which have consti- 
tuted epochs in the modern criticism of Hebrew poetry — • 
that, namely, of Dr. Ewald — we have but recently become 
acquainted. It avows great pretensions to minute accuracy 
and profound investigation, and seems, indeed, as a scientific 
treatise, incomparably better than either of its predecessors. 
But its literature is not quite equal to its knowledge. Its 
criticism is too often verbal ; more regard is paid to the 
vestments, or to the body, than to the spirit of the various 
strains ; it systematically sacrifices the later to the earlier 
literature of the Hebrews ; compared to Herder, its tone is 
cold ; and its many German peculiarities can never permit 
it to be naturalized in our country, invaluable as it must 
remain to the Scriptural scholar and the critic. 

Besides these, we know nothing of much mark on the 
subject, except the brilliant sketches of Eichhorn ; the well- 
written, compact, and rapid biographies of the various bards 
in Dr. Eadie's '• Biblical Cyclopaedia ;" and an interesting 
little volume by Dr. Macculloch of Greenock, entitled, 
"Literary Characteristics of the Scriptures." 

The principal of the different writers thus enumerated 
and characterized have differently classified the varieties of 
Hebrew poetry. 

Dr. Lowth divides it into prophetic, elegiac, didactic, 



VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 



79 



lyric, idyllic, and dramatic. To this arrangement, some 
objections may be stated. First, It is not a natural arrange- 
ment, seeing that lyrical poetry unquestionably preceded all 
the others. Secondly, It is not an accurate or logical ar- 
rangement, since, 1st, It is difficult to distinguish idyllic 
from lyric poetry — the one is but a species of the other ; 
and since, 2dly, prophetic poetry, so far from being distinct 
from any, included by turns all the enumerated varieties. Dr. 
Lowth, too, excludes Jonah and Daniel from the list of pro- 
phet-poets, because their writings have no metrical structure 
or poetical style — a canon which would degrade to dusty 
prose the "Be light" of Grod, and the golden rule of 
Christ. 

Herder's division is very general. Hebrew poetry, with 
him, consists of two leading forms — the j&gurative speech and 
the song. The most eloquent writers in the first kind were 
the prophets, and the most sublime lyrical effusions were the 
songs of the Temple. He adds : " Whether these two kinds 
were expanded into ampler forms, as the drama and heroic 
poetry, will be shown hereafter." That hereafter never fully 
came, although, from hints he throws out, he did find the 
heroic poem in the history written by Moses, and the drama 
in Solomon's Song and Job. 

Dr. Ewald's arrangement is much more logical than 
Lowth's, and more minute than Herder's. It deserves, there- 
fore, a somewhat fuller analysis. He commences by combat- 
ing the common notion, that epic poetry is the earliest. It is 
often, indeed, the first written, but has probably been pre- 
ceded by lyrics, which have vanished without leaving a trace. 
Nay, in some nations, it is quite unknown ; but no nation 
has wanted its early lyrical poetry, whether preceding or 
contemporaneous with the epic. The lyric, therefore, must 
be the earlier of the two. There are, besides, special reasons 
connected with the temperament and faith of the Hebrews, 
why lyrics should have had the start of epics. The epic 
requires " tranquillity and reserve of thought, self-possessed 
art, and rigid restraint of enthusiasm ;" whereas " suddenness 
of emotion and act. intensity and vivacity of simple and im- 
pressible feelings, the highest tension and rapid collapse of 
imagination," are characteristic of the Hebrew nation. The 
epic poet, moreover, is '• aided by a rich, developed, and, at 
the same time, pliable mythology ; whereas, the religion of 
6 



go VARIETIES OP HEBREW POETRY. 

the Hebrews is very grave and austere" (and, Ewald might 
have added, " true^^), " and leaves little room for poetic con- 
ception." As lyrical poetry was first, so it continued, for a 
long time, sole occupant of the field. Ewald describes it as 
possessing the widest compass, and reflecting the whole life 
of the nation at all times and in all circumstances ; as having 
its essential peculiarity in its musical form of utterance and 
delivery — it was immortal thought married to vocal or in- 
strumental melody ; and as divided, according to its subjects, 
into various species ; such as the hymn which commemorated 
some joyful or great event, witness the 29th, 46th, and 48th 
Psalms ; the dirge, such as David's lament for Saul and 
Jonathan, and such songs of mourning for the calamities of 
the land, as the 44th, 60th, and 73d Psalms ; the dithyrambic, 
an irregular, wild, and excited strain, the sole specimens of 
which occur in the 7th Psalm and in the 3d chapter of Ha- 
bakkuk ; the love-song, such as the 45th Psalm ; the prayer, 
in which, as in the 17th, 86th, and 102d Psalms, the devo- 
tional prevails over the poetical element ; and, lastly, the sen- 
tentious, satiric song, to be met with in the 14th, 58th, and 
82d Psalms, and which constitutes a link connecting the 
lyrical with the second variety of Hebrew poetry. This' 
Ewald calls gnomic poetry. In it, feeling is solidified into 
sentiment ; general truths take the place of individual im- 
pressions ; lyric rapture is exchanged for almost philosophic 
calm ; the style becomes less diffuse, and more sententious ; 
the form of verse remains, but the accompaniments of song 
and music are abandoned and forgotten. The rise of this 
poetry testifies to the advance of a people in the power of 
generalization, and shows that a quantity of experience has 
been accumulated into a national stock. In Israel, it com- 
menced with Solomon. Lyric poetry is a spray which rises 
from troubled waters, such as rolled in David's time ; but 
gnomic poetry is the calm ripple upon an ocean of peace. It 
necessarily united itself with the floating proverbial litera- 
ture of the country. From simple sententiousness it gra- 
dually swelled into oratory, snatched up fitfully the lyre it 
had thrown aside, or diverged into dramatic form, touching 
thus upon the third variety of Hebrew song. This is the 
drama. No regular shape of it, indeed, nor any approxima- 
tion to a theatre, a stage, or the many arts and contrivances 
connected with it, are to be found among the Hebrews. But 



VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 8 1 

the simple beginning and foundation of dramatic poetry may 
be traced in their poetry. This Ewald finds in the Song of 
Songs, " which appears as if designed for a stage, albeit a 
very simple one, which develops winged speeches of several 
persons, a complete action, and in the course of the whole 
admits definite pauses of the action, which are only suited to 
the drama." Job, too, seems to him a sublime drama, which, 
in comparison with the Song, may be called a tragedy. 

Proceeding at some length to analyze the Song, he finds 
in it various characters — a chorus, an action, a happy termi- 
nation, and a strong and lively moral. In this he is very 
successful ; but his preconception as to the late origin of the 
book of Job, leads him to ovet-estimate the art, and some- 
what to underrate the natural force and genius of that mar- 
vellous poem. 

For epic poetry, he searches in vain, amidst the earlier 
portions of the Hebrew literature, but descries its late be- 
ginnings, in Tobit, Judith, and some other of the apocryphal 
books. 

Such is Ewald's classification. It is excellent in some 
things, but, in the first place, it omits altogether the prophetic 
writers. These Ewald appears to regard as the orators of the 
land, rather than as its noblest and loftiest poets. Second- 
ly, it slurs over the truly epical character of the historical 
books of the Old Testament. Is not Exodus itself a great 
epic, as well as a true history, containing all the constituents 
of that species of poetry ? Thirdly, It rather oddly finds 
the commencement, if not the climax, of the degeneracy of 
Hebrew literature in the book of Job, which bears internal 
evidence of being the earliest as well as the most sublime 
poem in the world. We wonder Ewald had not also sought 
to prove that " Prometheus Vinctus " was written after the 
subjugation of Crreece by the Romans. We fancy a subtle 
critic, in the thirtieth century, starting the theory that 
" Macbeth " was translated from the German of Kotzebue, 
and falsely imputed to Shakspeare ! Fourthly, Ewald's 
principle of arrangement excludes altogether the prose-poetry 
of Scripture — not the least interesting and impressive — 
which abounds in the historical books, and constitutes the 
staple of the entire volume. 

Without intending strictly to abide by it in our after 
chapters, we may now propound a division of our own. 



82 



VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 



We would arrange Hebrew poetry under the two general 
heads of Song and Poetic Statement. We give the particu- 
lars which fall under this general division. 
We have first Song — 

Exulting— in odes of triumph— Psalm cl. 

Insulting — in strains of irony and invective — Psalm cix. 

Mourning— over calamities — Psalm Ixxi., Lamentations. 

Worshipping — God — Psalm civ. 

Loving — in friendly or amatory songs — Psalm xlv. 

Reflecting — in gnomic or sententious strains — Psalm exxxix., 

Proverbs. 
Interchanging — in the varied persons and parts of the simple 

drama— Job and Song. 
"Wildly-luxuriating — as in Psalm vii., Habakkuk iii. 
Narrating— the past deeds of God to Israel, the simple epic — 

Psalm Ixxviii., Exodus, &c. 
Predicting — the future history of the church and the world — 

Prophetic Writings. 

We have second, Poetical Statement, or Statement 

1st, Of poetic facts (creation, &c.) 

2d, Of poetic doctrines (God's spirituality). 

3d, Of poetic sentiments, with or without figurative language 

(golden rule, &c.) 
4th, Of poetic symbols (in Zechariah, Revelation, &c.) 

In support of this division, we maintain, first, that it is 
comprehensive, including every real species of poetry in 
Scripture — including, specially, the prophetic writings, the 
New Testament, and that mass of seed poetry in which the 
Book abounds, apart from its professedly rhythmical and 
figured portions. Song and statement appear to include the 
Bible between them, and the statement is sometimes more 
poetical than the song. If aught evade this generalization, 
it is the argumefit^ which is charily sprinkled throughout 
the Epistles of Paul. Even that is logic defining the 
boundaries of the loftiest poetry. All else, from the simple 
narrations of Ezra and Nehemiah, up to the most ornate 
and oratorical appeals of the prophets, is genuinely poetic, 
and ought by no means to be excluded froji the range of our 
critical explication and panegyric. Surely the foam on the 
brow of the deep is not all its poetry, is not more poetical 
than the vast billows on which it swells and rises, and rather 
typifies than exhausts the boundless power and beauty which 
are below. " God is a spirit," or " God is love," contains, 



VARIETIES OP HEBREW POETRY. S^ 

each sentence, a world of poetic beauty, as well as divine 
meaning. Indeed, certain prose sentences constitute the 
essence of all the poetry in the Scriptures. Round the rule 
'' Thou shalt love the Lord thy Grod with all thy heart, and 
all thy soul, and all thy mind, and all thy strength, and thy 
neighbor as thyself," revolve the moral beauties and glories 
of both Testaments ; its praises are chanted alike by Sinai's 
thunders and the temple songs ; round it cluster the Psalms, 
and on it hang the Prophets. What planetary splendors 
gather and circle about the grand central truth contained in 
the opening verse, " In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth," and about the cognate statement, " The Lord 
our God is one Lord !" And how simple that sentence which 
unites the psalmodies of earth and of heaven in one reverbe- 
rating chorus, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain !" Truly 
the songs of Scripture are magnificent, but its statements 
are "words unutterable," which it is not possible for the 
tongue of man to utter ! 

Secondly, Our division is simple, and is thus better fitted 
to the simplicity of the Hebrew poetry. It disguises less 
elaborately, and dresses less ostentatiously, the one main 
thing which lies within all the rhythmical books of the 
Bible. That one thing is lyrical impulse and fire. " Still 
its speech is song," whether one or many speakers be intro- 
duced, and whether that song mourn or rejoice, predict or 
instruct, narrate or adore. The Song of Solomon is a song, 
not a drama ; or let us call it a dramatic song. Job is a 
lyrical drama, or dramatic lyric. The histories are song- 
sprinkled narratives, facts moving to the sound of music and 
dancing. And the prophets seem all to stand, like Elisha, 
beside the kings of Israel and Judah, each one with a min- 
strel's harp beside him, and to it and the voice of accom- 
panying song, there break the clouds and expand the land- 
scapes of futurity. 

This lyrical impulse was not, however, the mere breath 
of human genius. It was the " wind of God's mouth," the 
immediate effect of a divine afflatus. This, former critics 
too much overlook. They find art where they ought to find 
inspiration ; or they cry out " genius," when they ought to 
say, with solemn reverence and whispered breath, "God." 
And by preserving, more entirely than others, the lyrical 
character of all Hebrew poetry, we supply this third reason 



84 



POETRY OF THE PENTATETCH. 



for the adoption of our classification — It links the effect 
more closely with its cause — it exhibits all Hebrew song, 
whether simple or compound, from Moses down to Malachi, 
as stirred into being by one Great Breath — finding in the 
successive poets and prophets, so many successive lyres for 
the music, soft or stormy, high or low, sad or joyful, which it 
wished to discourse. To say that all those lyres wore na- 
tively of equal sweetness or compass, or that the Breath 
made them so — that all those poets were naturally, or by 
inspiration, alike eloquent and powerful, were to utter an 
absurdity. But is it less absurd to suppose a systematic 
decline in the fitness and fulness of the lyres — in the elo- 
quence and power of the prophets — when we remember, first, 
that Habakkuk, Haggai, and Zechariah, belonged to this 
latter class ; when we remember, secondly, that the latter 
day of Judah exhibited crises of equal magnitude, and as 
worthy of poetic treatment, as its earlier ; wB^ we remem- 
ber, thirdly, that the great event, the coming of ^Christ, to 
which all the prophets testified, was more clearly revealed 
to the last of the company; and when we remember, fourthly, 
that the Power who overshadowed Malachi, was the same 
who inspired Moses — his eye no dimmer, his ear no heavier, 
his hand no shorter, and his breath no feebler than of old ? 
No ! the peculiar prophetic and poetic influence did not 
gradually diminish, or by inches decay ; but whether owing 
to the sin of the people, or to the sovereignty of God, it 
seems to have expired in an instant. Prophecy went down 
at once, like the sun of the tropics, leaving behind it only 
such a faint train of zodiacal light as we find in the apocry- 
phal books ; nor did it reappear, till it assumed the person 
of the Prophet of Galilee, and till he who in times past 
spoke unto the fathers, by the prophets, did, in the last days, 
speak unto us by his own Son. 



CHAPTER lY, 



POETRY OP THE PENTATEUCH. 



We have intimated already, that, though we have, in the 
former chapter classified Hebrew poetry under certain ge- 
neric heads, we deem it best in our future remarks, to pur- 



POETFwY OF THE PENTATEUCH. 8/ 

sue the method of following it down as we find it in the va- 
rious writings of Scripture. Such a method will secure va- 
riety, will lead to an informal history of the progress of 
Bible poetry, and prevent any of its prominent writers being 
overlooked, or lost amidst vague and general description. 

We meet, first, with that singular collection of books 
called the Pentateuch — or five Books of Moses — books which, 
though containing few professedly poetical passages, are 
steeped throughout in the essence of poetry. 

In the catalogue of Israel's prophetic bards, Moses stands 
earliest. Poets, indeed, and poetry there had been before 
him. Some of those aboriginal songs, such as Lamech's 
speech to his wives, and Jacob's dying words, Moses has 
himself preserved ; but he undoubtedly was the Homer, as 
well as the Solon of his country. We never can separate 
his genius from his character, so meek, yet stern ; from his 
appearance, so gravely commanding, so spiritually severe ; 
from his law, " girt with dark thunder and embroidered 
fires ;" and from certain incidents in his history — his figure 
in the ark, when, at the sight of the strange, richly-attired 
lady, " Behold the babe wept" — his attitude beside the bush 
that burned in the wilderness — his sudden entrance into the 
presence of Pharaoh — his lifting up. with that sinewy, swarthy 
hand, the rod over the Red Sea — his ascent up the black 
precipices of Sinai — his death on Pisgah, with the promised 
land full in view — his mystic burial in a secret vale by the 
hand of the Eternal — his position, as the leader of the great 
Exodus of the tribes, and the founder of a strict, compli- 
cated, and magnificent polity — all this has given a supple- 
mental and extraordinary interest to the writings of Moses. 
Their sublimity arises generally from the calm recital of 
great events. He is the sternest of all the Scripture writers, 
and the most laconic. His writings may be called hiero- 
glyphics of the strangest and greatest events in the early 
part of the world's history. Summing up the work of innu- 
merable ages in the one pregnant sentence with which the 
book begins, he then maps out, in a chapter, the arrange- 
ments of the present form of the creation, gives the miniature 
of the original condition of earth's happy inhabitants, and 
the hieroglyphics of their fall ; runs rapidly across the ante- 
diluvian patriarchs ; gives, graphically, but simply, the grand 
outlines of the deluge ; traces to a short distance the di- 



88 POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH. 

verging rivers of empire which flowed from the ark ; and 
embarks, in fine, upon the little, but widening, stream of the 
story of Seth's children. When he begins to be anecdotal, 
the anecdotes are culled from a vast space of ground, which 
he leaves untouched. He is not a minute and full-length 
biographer, and never, till he comes to the details of the 
legal system, does he drop his Spartan garb of short and 
overleaping narrative, and become simply, yet nobly, diffuse. 
His st^^e of writing resembles the characters sculptured on 
the walls of Egyptian temples, lowering over the gates of 
Thebes, or dim-discovered amid the vaults of the Pyramids, 
whence he, who afterwards " refused to be called the son of 
Pharaoh's daughter," drunk in the first draught of inspira- 
tion, to be renewed, again and again, at holier fountains, till, 
sublimed by it, he dared to climb a quaking Sinai, and to 
front a fire-girt God. His style, colored by early familiarity 
with that strange, silent tongue, partakes here and there of 
certain of its qualities, its intricate simplicity, its " language 
within language" of allegorical meaning, and resembles the 
handwriting of him who wrote on the wall of the Babylonian 
palace — " Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin." 

As a narrator, Moses makes a word or two do the work 
of pictures. Nor is this word always an enos nrepoev — a word 
rolled together, like a double star — but often a plain, unme- 
taphorical term, which quakes under the thought or scene it 
describes. The pathos or the grandeur, instead of elevating 
and enkindling his language, levels and sinks it. His lan- 
guage may be called the mere transparent window through 
which the " immeasurable calm" — the blue of immensity — 
looks in. Certainly it is the least figurative of all the 
Scripture styles. Its simplicity is deeper than that of age's 
unmoved narratives ; it is rather ihsit of infancy, telling 
some dreadful tale in an under tone, and with upcast looks 
of awe. It is as if Moses, at the feet of that simulacrum of 
Deity which he saw on the mount, had become a child ; as if 
the Glory, which might have maddened others, had only 
sunk him down into the ark of bulrushes again. And, from 
that hour, dropping all the learning of the Egyptians, the 
mystic folds of which he had wrapped around him, he is con- 
tent to be the mere instrument in the Divine hand, and be- 
comes, that meekest man — a boy repeating with quivering 
voice and heart the lesson his father has taught him. Hence 



POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH. 



89 



the Fall is recounted without a word of comment or regret ; 
the sight of an ocean-world starts up but one expression 
which looks like a metaphor — the " windows of heaven ;" 
the journey of Abraham, going forth, not knowing whither 
he went, in search of a far country — the most momentous 
journey in the history of man — is told as succinctly and 
quietly, as are afterwards the delinquencies of Er and Judah ; 
through a naked narrative, bursts the deep pathos involved 
in the story of Joseph ; and how telescopic, in its clear calm- 
ness, his view of the Ten Plagues, sweeping in their course 
between the Nile of raging blood and the cry which pro- 
claimed the findings of that fearful morning, when there was 
not a house but there was one dead — the whole a dread 
circle of desolation, mourning, and woe. And even when 
he brings us in sight of Sinai — the proud point in his life — 
the centre of his system — the scene, too, of his sublime 
agony, for there did he not exceedingly fear and quake ? — 
his description is no more than the bare transcript of its 
terrors. They are not grouped together, as by Paul after- 
wards ; and far less are they exaggerated by rhetorical 
artifice. 

This is the way in which he represents the fierce splen- 
dors which gathered around Sinai as the Ancient One de- 
scended : " And it came to pass, on the third day, in the morn- 
ing, that there were thunders, and lightnings, and a thick 
cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding 
loud, so that all the people which were in the camp trembled. 
And Mosch brought forth the people out of the camp to meet 
with God, and they stood at the nether part of the mount. 
And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the 
Lord descended upon it in fire ; and the smoke thereof ascend- 
ed as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked 
greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, 
and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered 
him by a voice." 

Nor did this intense simplicity betray any lack of poetical 
sensibility, or prove Moses a mere stony legislator, fitly typi- 
fied by the cold tables which received and cooled the red drop- 
ping syllables of the " Fiery Law." That, on the contrary, 
he was actuated by a sublime lyric afflatus, which moved him 
at times, we have ample evidence in the odes which are found 
sprinkled through his books. Witness the pasan of exultation 



90 



POEURY OF THE PEXTATEUCH. 



which, chanted by the voice and cymbals of the millions of 
Israel, sung the requiem of Pharaoh and his " Memphian 
Chivalry;" and where, even as the naked storm of vocal 
sound intermarried and incarnated itself in timbrels and 
dances, so did the emotions of the lyrist clothe themselves in 
thick and vaulting imagery. In another strain — more sub- 
dued, more melting — does he, in the 90th Psalm, pour out 
the common plaint of all ages, over the shortness and frailty 
of life. But deepest the touch of poetry left on his last song, 
when, in his enthusiasm, he calls on heaven and earth to give 
audience to his words, and proceeds to utter what might com- 
pel the attention of both, in a song that might be set to the 
sphere music, or sung in that floating melody — those " mystic 
snatches of harmonious sound" — which poets say sometimes 
visit this sad world, smooth its air, appease its hungry rest- 
lessness, and strike invisible, unaccountable, but short-lived 
joy through all its withered veins. 

Moses we have called the Homer of his country ; nor is 
the epithet inappropriate, when we remember that both unite 
to simplicity that sublimity which flames out of it, like vol- 
canic fire starting from a bare and bleak surface — that pathos 
which searches, in perfect unconsciousness, the inmost depths 
of the soul — and that air of Eld, which in both leads back 
our thoughts to primitive and perished ages, when the human 
heart, the human soul, the human size, were larger than now 
— when the heavens were nearer, the skies clearer, the clouds 
more gorgeous, the foam of the sea brighter, the fat of the 
earth richer, than in our degenerate days — when the sense of 
the ideal and the infinite, of the things unseen and eternal, 
still overtopped the seen, the tangible, and the temporal — 
when in our groves were still seen the shadows of angels, and 
on our mountains the smoking footsteps of God. 

The effect of Moses upon the history of Hebrew poetry 
was, as Herder shows, manifold. In the first place, his 
deeds — the plagues he sent on Egypt, the passage of the 
E,ed Sea, the march through the wilderness, the wars in which 
he led the people to triumph — furnished fine poetical subjects, 
of which after writers availed themselves. His whole system, 
too, was poetry organized, and hence sprung the songs of the 
sanctuary in David's and yet later days. Secondly, his own 
poems, though few, were very striking, and, both from their 
own power and as proceeding from the great legislator, were 




MOSES BBFOEE PHAEAOH'S DAUaHTER. 



POETRY OF THE PEJfTATEUCH. 



93 



calculated to exert an influence on after poets, who, indeed, 
made them their models. And, thirdly, Moses even provided 
for the revival of sacred poetry in times of declension, by the 
privilege he gave and secured to the prophets. They were 
the proper successors of Moses — " watchmen who, when the 
priests were silent and the great tyrannical," spoke in start- 
ling truth and in poetic form to the heart and conscience of 
the land. Moses was the leader of this noble band, and his 
deep voice found in them a multitude of echoes, till, in Mala- 
chi, it died away in the muttering of the word " curse," which 
closes the Old Testament record. 

One great image in Moses we must not overlook. It is 
at the crisis of the passage of the Red Sea, where, as the 
Egyptians are pressing down the dry channels, and treading 
in the shadows, and just fixing their grasp upon their foes, 
the Lord, through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, looks 
unto the host of the Egyptians, and troubles them. That 
pillar shapes itself into an eye, which sends a separate dismay 
into each Egyptian heart, and all is felt to be lost. We find 
two imitations of this in modern poetry— one by Coleridge, 
in his " Ode on the Departing Year," where he prays God to 

" Open his eye of fire from some uncertain cloud ; " 

and another, in the " Curse of Kehama," where, after the 
" Man Almighty," holding his Amreeta cup, had exclaimed — 

" Now, Seeva, look to thine abode ! 
Henceforth, on equal footing, we engage 
Alike immortal now, and we shall wage 
Our warfare, God to God," 

it is added, when the cup is drank — 

" Then Seeva opened on the accursed one 
His eye of anger — upon him alone 
The wrath-beam fell. He shudders, but too late." 

Thus, by far the sublimest passage in Southey's poetry seems 
colored by, if not copied from. Scripture. Pharaoh'' s eye 
meeting Jehovah'' s in that grim hour — what a subject for 
John Martin, or for David Scott, had he been alive ! 

Herder has not failed to notice the air of solitude which 
breathes about the poetry, as it did about the character, of 
Moses. He was the loneliest of men : lonely in his flight 
from Egypt — lonely while herding his flock in the wilder- 



94 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OP JOB, 



ness — lonely while climbing Mount Sinai — lonely on the 
summit, and lonely when descending the sides of the hill — 
lonely in his death, and lonely in his burial. Even whilo 
mingling with the multitudes of Israel, he remained secluded 
and alone. As the glory which shone on his face insulated 
him for a time from men, so did all his life his majestic 
nature. He was among men, but not of them. Stern incar- 
nation of the anger of Omnipotence, thy congenial companions 
were not Aaron, nor Joshua, nor Zipporah, but the rocks and 
caves of Horeb, the fiery pillar, the bush burning, the 
visible glory of the sanctuary, the lightning-wreaths round 
Sinai's sullen brow, and all other red symbols of Jehovah's 
presence ! "With such, like a kindred fire upon one funeral 
pile, didst thou gloomily embrace and hold still communion ! 
Shade of power not yet perished — sole lord of millions still, 
wielding the two tables as the sceptres of thy extant sove- 
reignty, with thy face flashing back the splendors of the Di- 
vine eye, and seeming to descend evermore thy " Thunder-hill 
of Fear " — it is with a feeling of awful reverence that we bid 
thee farewell ! 



CHAPTER V. 



POETRY OP THE BOOK OF JOB. 



Be the author of the book of Job who he may, he was not 
Moses. Nothing can be more unlike the curt and bare sim- 
plicity of Moses' style, than the broad-blown magnificence 
of Job. It is like one severe feather, compared to the out- 
spread wing of an eagle. Moses had seen many countries 
and many men, had studied many sciences, and passed through 
numerous adventures, which tamed, yet strung his spirit. The 
author of Job is a contemplative enthusiast, who, the greater 
part of his life, had been girt in by the rocks of his coun- 
try, and who, from glowing sand below, and glittering crag 
around, and torrid sky above, had c] jthed his spirit and his 
language with a barbaric splendor. He is a prince, but a 
prince throned in the wilderness — a sage, but his wisdom has 
been taught him in the library of the everlasting hills — a 
poet, but his song is untaught and unmodified by art or learn- 



POETRY OF rHE BOOK OP JOB, 95 

ing, as that in which the nightingale hails the hush of even- 
ing. The geography of the land of Job is a commentary on 
its poetry. Conceive a land lorded over by the sun, when 
lightning, rushing in, like an angry painter, did not dash his 
wild colors across the landscape ; a land ever in extremes — 
now dried up as in a furnace, now swimming with loud wa- 
ters — its sky the brightest or the blackest of heavens — deso- 
late crags rising above rank vegetation — ^beauty adorning 
the brow of barrenness — shaggy and thunder-split hills sur- 
rounding narrow valleys and water-courses ; a land for a 
great part bare in the wrath of nature, when not swaddled in 
sudden tempest and whirlwind ; a land of lions, and wild 
goats, and wild asses, and ostriches, and hawks stretching to- 
ward the south, and horses clothed with thunder, and eagles 
making their nests on high ; a land through whose transpa- 
rent air night looked down in all her queenlike majesty, all 
her most lustrous ornaments on — the south blazing through 
all its chambers as with solid gold — the north glorious with 
Arcturus and his sons — the zenith crowning the heavens with 
a diadem of white, and blue, and purple stars. Such the 
land in which this author lived, such the sky he saw ; and 
can we wonder that poetry dropped on and from him, like 
rain from a thick tree ; and that grandeur — a grandeur aK 
most disdaining beauty, preferring firmaments to flowers, 
making its garlands of the whirlwind — became his very soul. 
The book of Job shows a mind smit with a passion for na- 
ture, in her simplest, most solitary, and elementary forms — 
gazing perpetually at the great shapes of the material uni- 
verse, and reproducing to us the infant infinite wonder with 
which the first inhabitants of the world must have seen their 
first sunrise, their first thunderstorm, their first moon wan- 
ing ; their first midnight heaven expanding, like an arch of 
triumph, over their happy heads. One object of the book is 
to prophesy of nature — to declare its testimony to the Most 
High — to unite the leaves of its trees, the wings of its fowls, 
the eyes of its stars, in one act of adoration to Jehovah. 
August undertaking, and meet for one reared in the desert, 
anointed with the dew of heaven, and by God himself in- 
spired. 

If any one word can express the merit of the natural de- 
scriptions in Job, it is the word^^xisto. You do something 
more than see his behemoth, his warhorse, and his leviathan : 
7 



g6 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 

you touch, smell, hear, and handle them too. It is no shadow 
of the object he sets before you, but the object itself, in its 
length, breadth, height, and thickness. In this point, he is 
the Landseer of ancient poetry, and something more. That? 
great painter seems, every one knows, to become the animal 
he is painting — to intermingle his soul for a season with that 
of the stag, the horse, or the bloodhound. So Job, with the 
warhorse, swallows the ground with fierceness and rage—* L 
with behemoth, moves his tail like a cedar — with the eagle, | 
smells the slain afar off, and screams with shrill and far- * 
heard joy. In the presence of Landseer's figures, you be- 
come inspired by the pervading spirit of the picture — you 
start back, lest his sleeping bloodhound awake — you feel 
giddy beside his stag on the brow of the mountain — you look 
at his greyhound's beauty, almost with the admiration which 
he might be supposed to feel, glancing at his own figure, 
during his leap across the stream. Job's animals seem 
almost higher than nature's. You hear God describing and 
panegyrizing his own works, and are not ashamed to feel 
yourselves pawing and snorting with his charger — carrying 
away your wild scorn and untamable freedom, with the^ 
ostrich, into the wilderness — or, with behemoth, drawing in 
Jordan into your mouth. It may be questioned if Land- ' 
seer has the very highest imagination — if he be not rather a' 
literal than an ideal painter — :if he could, or durst, go down( |, 
after Jonah into the whale, or exchange souls with the mam-^ \ 
moth or megatherium? Job uniformly transcends, while*'/, 
sympathizing with his subjects — casts on them a light not 
their own, as from the " eyelids of the morning ;" and the 
greater the subject is, he occupies and fills it with the more; 
ease : he dandles his leviathan like a kid. Landseer we have ' 
charged, elsewhere, with almost an inhuman sympathy with 
brutes ; and a moral or religious lesson can with difficulty be 
gathered from his pictures — his dying deer would tempt you, 
by their beauty, to renew the tragedy ; but Deus est anima 
brutorum hangs suspended over Job's colossal drawings, and, 
as in fable, all his animals utter a moral while passing on be- 
fore you. Near those descriptions of his, we can place no- 
thing in picture, prose, or poetry, save such lines in Milton 
as that describing leviathan — 

"Whom God 
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream ; 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 97 

or Blake's lines — 

" Tiger, tiger, burning bright 
In the deserts of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 
Framed thy fearful symmetry *?" 

Besides those natural descriptions, the poetic elements 
in Job may be included under the following : — The scene in 
heaven, the calamities of Job, his first expression of an- 
guish, the vision of Eliphaz!, the moral pictures which 
abound, the praise of Wisdom, the entrance of the Deity, 
the beauty of the close, and, above all, the great argument 
pervading the whole. The scene in heaven has always been 
admired, and often imitated. It struck Byron much ; par- 
ticularly the thought of Satan being actually brought back, 
as by an invisible chain, to the court of heaven, and com- 
pelled to witness its felicity, and subserve the purposes of 
God. Shelley, again, meditated a tragedy on the subject, 
which would have been, probably, a very daring and power- 
ful accommodation of Job to his own unhappy notions. 
Goethe, in his " Faust," and Bayley, in his " Festus," have 
both imitated this scene. It abounds at once in poetic in-, 
terest and profound meaning. Job has previously been f I 
pictured sitting in peace and prosperity under his vine andi 
fig-tree. He has little about him to excite any peculiar i 
interest. Suddenly the blue curtain of the sky over his lv 
head seems to open, the theatre of the highest heaven ex- \ 
pands, and of certain great transactions there he becomes \ 
the unconscious centre. What a background now has that ' 
still figure ! Thus every man always is the hero of a 
triumph or a tragedy as wide as the universe. Thus '• each" 
is always linked to " all." Thus, above each world, too, do 
heaven and hell stand continually, like the dark and the 
bright suns of astronomy, and the planets between them. 
In that highest heaven, a day has dawned of solemn con- 
clave. From their thousand missions of justice and mercy 
return the sons of God, to report their work and their 
tidings ; and inasmuch as their work has been done, their 
aspects are equally tranquil, whether their tidings are evil 
or good. But, behind them, 

" A spirit of a different aspect waved 

His wings, like thunderclouds, above some coast, 

Whose barren beach with frequent wrecks is paved ; 

His brow was like the deep when tempest-tost." 



98 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 



I He is a black spot in this " feast of charity," a scowl amid 
this splendor, and yet acts as only a foil to its beauty and 
brightness. Thus all things and beings are in perpetual 
communication with their centre — God ; thus even evil 
brings in its dark, barbaric tribute, and lays it down at his 
feet, and there is no energy in the universe so eccentric 
as not to have a path and perihelion around the central 
sun. 

Turning aside from the multitude of worshippers, the 
Almighty questions the grim spirit, " W/ienceoomestihoul" 
— not, in surprise, " thou here ?" but, in inquiry, " zvlience 
hast thou now come ?" The reply is, " From going to and 
fro in the earth." Yes ! the earth seems ever that spot of 
creation round which higher intelligences throng, not on 
account of the paltry stakes of battles and empires being 
played therein, but because there a mightier game, as to the 
reconciliation of man with God (thrilling, though simple 
words ! words containing in them the problem of all theo- 
logy !), is advancing with dubious aspect, though with certain 
issue. One man in the land of Uz seems to have attained^ 
the solution of that problem. He is at once virtuous and ' 
prosperous. Adored by men, he adores God. He is wise,^ 
without any special inspiration. He is perfect, but not 
through suffering. He is clean, without atonement. This i 
man is pointed out by God to Satan, " Behold the type of 
the Good Man ! what thinkest thou of him? Canst -thou) 
perceive any flaw in his character ? Is he not at once great \ 
and good?" The subtle spirit rejoins, " that he has never,, 
been tried. He is pious because prosperous ; let afflictions \ 
strip away his green leaves, and they will discover a skeleton ' 
stretching out arms of defiance to Heaven ; or should the 
tree, remaining itself unmutilated, though stripped of its 
foliage, droop in submission, yet let its trunk be touched 
and blasted, curses will come groaning up from the root to j 
the topmost twig, and, falling, it will bow in blasphemy, not 
in prayer." AVhat is this, but a version of the fiendish 
insinuation, that there is no real worth or virtue in man but 
circumstances may overturn ; that religion is just a form of 
refined selfishness ; and that no mode of dealing, whether 
adverse or prosperous, on the part of God, can produce the 
desired reconciliation ? And the purpose of the entire after- 
book is, in reply, to prove that affliction, while stripping the 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF jOB. 



99 



tree, and even touching its inner life, only confirms its roots 
— that affliction not only tries, but purifies and tends to 
perfect, the sufferer — that individual suffering does not fur- 
nish an adequate index to individual culpability — that the 
tendency of suffering is to throw back the sufferer into the 
arms of the Great Inflictor, and to suggest the necessity of 
the medium which can alone complete reconciliation, that, 
namely, of intercessory sacrifice — that there is something 
higher than peace or happiness — and, finally, that all this 
casts a softening and clearing lustre upon the sad mysteries 
of the world, as well as proves the necessity, asserts the 
possibility, assigns the means, and predicts the attainment, 
of final reconciliation. But this reply^ which is the argu- 
ment of the poemj falls to be considered afterwards. The 
first two chapters are a full statement, in concrete form, of 
the grand difficulty . 

The thick succession of Job's calamities is one of the 
most striking passages in the poem. The conduct of Ford's 
heroine, who continues to dance on while news of " death, 
and death, and death," of brother, friend, husband, are 
brought her in succession, her heart, the while, breaking in 
secret, has been much admired. But princelier still, and 
more natural, the figure of the patient patriarch, seated at 
his tent-door, and listening to message after message of spoil, 
conflagration, ruin, and death, till, in the course of one curd- 
ling hour of agony, he finds himself flockless, serfless, child- 
less, a beggar and a wreck amid all the continued insignia of 
almost royal magnificence. But his heart breaks not. He 
does not dash away into the wilderness. He does not throw 
himself on the ground. He does not tear his white hair in 
agony. With decent and manly sorrow, he indeed shaves 
his head, and rends, after the custom of his country, his rai- 
ment. But his language is, "Naked came I out of my 
mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither ; the Lord 
gave, and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name 
of the Lord." From some clime of eternal calm seem 
those accents to descend. The plaints of Prometheus and 
Lear come from a lower region. The old tree has been 
shorn by a swift-running and all-encompassing fire of its fair 
foliage; but it has bent its head in reverence before the 
whirlwind, ere it passed away. In sculpture, there are a 
silence and calm which, in nature, are only found in parts 



lOO 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 



and parcels — a stillness within stillness — the hushing of a 
hush. But not sculpture itself can fully express the look 
of resignation (as if all calamity were met and subdued by 
it) which Job's countenance returned to that sky of ruin 
which suddenly lowered over the tent of his fathers. 

But, alas ! all calamity was not met and subdued by it. 
Other griefs were in store, and the iron must enter into his / 
soul. His patient resolve, firm as the " sinew " of leviathan, 
was at last subdued ; and there broke forth from him that 
tremendous curse, which has made the third chapter of Job ' 
dear to all the miserable. Who can forget the figure of 
Swift, each revolving birthday, retiring into his closet, shut- 
ting the door behind him — not to fast or to pray, but to read 
this chapter, perhaps, with wild sobs of self-application ? Nor 
could even he wring out thus the last drops of its bitterness. 
It is still a Marah, near which you trace many miserable 
footsteps ; and never, while misery exists, can its dreary 
grandeur, its passion for death, the beauty it pours upon the 
grave, the darkness which, collecting from all glooms and 
solitudes, it bows down upon the one fatal day of birth, be 
forgotten. " Let them bless it that curse the day," for surely 
it is the most piercing cry ever uttered in this world of 
" lamentations, mourning, and woe." 

In describing an apparition, as in describing all the other 
objects collected in his poem, the author of Job has this ad- 
vantage — his is, so far as we know, the first. 

" He is the first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea " 

of shadows, dreams, and all the other fears and marvels of 
the night. Is it asked, how ought an apparition to be repre- 
sented ? "We reply, as it ought to be seen. With a certain 
preceding consciousness, the shadow of the approaching 
shade, with fear shaking every bone, but overpowering no 
part of the man — with hair shivering, but with eye fixed and 
strained in piercing intensity of vision — with the perception 
of a form without distinct outline, of a motion without sound, 
of a fixed position without figure, of a voice so faint, " that 
nothing lives 'twixt it and silence" — with a strange spiritual 
force from within rising up to bear the burden, and meet the 
communion of an unearthly presence — and with the passing 
away of that burden, like the gradual dropping of a load of 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. Id 

heavy gloom from the mind ; thus could we conceive a man, 
bold in spirit, strong in health, and firm in faith, meeting a 
messenger from the dead. And thus has Eliphaz described 
his visitor. It is the hour of night. He is alone on his 
couch. A shudder, like the sigh of a spirit, passes over him. 
This shudder strengthens till every fibre of his frame shakes. 
Then he becomes "aware" of the presence and transit of a 
spiritual being, and every hair on his flesh starts up to do 
him homage. This motion not heard, stills into a form not 
seen. In awful balance between matter and spirit, hangs 
the dim shade before the strained, yet unmaddened eye. 
And then a voice, fainter than a whisper, but more distinct, 
trembling between sound and silence, is heard, " How can 
man be more just than God, or mortal man more just than 
his Maker ?" Toj)aint_ a shade is surely the most difficult 
of a chieye mentsT^ But h'ere Elipiiaz" seizes, in the inspired 
glance or one sentence, the middle point vibrating between 
the two worlds. Not so successfully has Milton essayed 
to set chaos before us, in language jarring and powerful 
almost as the tumultuous surge it describes, and by images 
culled from all elements of contradiction, confusion, and 
unrule. 

Innumerable since have been the poetical descriptions, as 
well as pictorial representations, of ghosts and ghost-scenes. 
But the majority are either too gross or too shadowy. Some 
have painted their ghosts too minutely ; they have made an 
inventory of a spirit — head, hair, teeth, feet, dress, and all, 
are literally represented, till our terror sinks into disgust, or 
explodes into laughter. Thus Monk Lewis describes his 
fiend, as Jioarse with the vapors of hell. Thus, while Shak- 
speare clothes his ghost with complete steel, an inferior genius 
since makes the steel of his ghostly warrior red-hot. Others 
dilute their vapory apparitions till they vanish quite away. 
One author is deep in the knowledge of panic terror (Brock- 
den Brown). He makes you fear as much in company as 
alone, as much at noon as at midnight — he separates the 
shiver of supernatural fear from the consciousness of a su- 
pernatural presence, and gives you it entire, "lifting the 
skin from the scalp to the ankles." But this, though a 
rare power, evades the difficulty of representing a spirit. 
Perhaps Scott, the painter, and Southey, the poet, have 
succeeded best : Scott in his Demon of the Cape appearing 



I02 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 

to Vasco de Gama, and Southey in his famed description of 
Arvalan appearing to Kailyal. 

" A nearer horror met the maiden's view, 
For right before her a dim form appeared — 
A human form, in that black night, 
Distinctly shaped by its own lurid light — 
Such light as the sickly moon is seen to shed 
Through spell-raised fogs, a bloody, baleful red. 
That spectre fixed his eyes upon her full ; 
The light which shone in their accursed orbs 

Was like a light from hell, 
And it grew deeper, kindling with the view. 

She could not turn her sight 
From that infernal gaze, which, like a spell, 
Bound her, and held her rooted to the ground. 

It palsied every power. 
Her limbs availed her not in that dread hour ; 

There was no moving thence. • 

Thought, memory, sense, were gone. 
She heard not now the tiger's nearer cry ; 

She thought not on her father now ; 

Her cold heart's-blood ran back ; 
Her hand lay senseless on the bough it clasped ; 

Her feet were motionless; 

Her fascinated eyes, 
Like the stone eyeballs of a statue, fixed, 
Yet conscious of the sight that blasted them." 

This is genius, but genius laboring to be afraid. In Job, 
it is mere man trembling in the presence of a spiritual 
power. 

The moral pictures in Job are even more wonderful, 
when we consider the period. Society was then a narrow 
word — a colossal fixture, without play, fluctuation, or fluent, 
onward motion. From this you might have expected much 
sameness in the descriptions of character ; and yet there is 
a great variety. In the several pictures of the misery of the 
wicked, not only is the imagery almost prodigally varied, but 
there are new traits of character introduced into each. Job's 
account of the state of his prosperity is famous for redund- 
ancy of beautiful figures. It is itself a cornucopia. And 
how interesting the glimpses given us of the manners and 
customs of a pastoral and primitive age ! None of the 
landscapes of Claude Titian or Poussin equal these. We 
see 

" A pastoral people, native there, 
Who, from the Elysian, soft, and sunny air, 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OP JOB. IO3 

Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, 
Simple and generous, innocent and bold," 

All that has since occurred on the bustling stage of the 
world is forgotten as a dream. That innocent, beautiful life 
seems the only reality. 

The praise of wisdom must not be overlooked. It is the 
anticipation of an answer to Pilate's question, '• What is 
truth?" That did not, or at least ought not to have meant, 
what is the absolute truth of all things ? — a question equiva- 
lent to, what is Omniscience? — but, what is that portion 
of the universal truth, what the extract from its volume, 
which can satisfy the soul, coincide with conscience, give 
a sense of safety, and form a firm pillow for the bed of death ? 

To this question, many insufficient and evasive answers 
have been returned. Science has sought for truth in fields, 
and mines, and furnaces — in atoms and in stars — and has 
found many glittering particles, but not any such lump of 
pure gold, any such '• sum of saving knowledge," as is en- 
titled to the name of the truth. '• The sea saith, It is not in 
me." TJie truth grows not among the flowers of the field, 
sparkles not among the gems of the mine; no crucible can 
extract it from the furnace, no microscope detect it in the 
depths, and no telescope descry it in the heights of nature. 
Art. too, has advanced to reply. Her votaries have gazed at 
the loveliness of creation ; they have listened to her voice, 
they have watched the stately steps of her processes ; and 
that loveliness they have sought to imitate in paint- 
ing, those steps to follow in architecture, and those voices 
to repeat in music and in song. But painting must 
whisper back to poetry, poetry repeat to music, and music 
wail out to architecture — •' It is not in us." Others, again, 
have followed a bolder course. Kegarding art as trifling, 
and even science as shallow, they have aspired to enter with 
philosophy into the springs and secrets of things, and to 
compel truth herself to answer them from her inmost shrine. 
But too often, in proportion to their ambition, has been their 
failure. We sicken as we remember the innumerable at- 
tempts which have been made, even by the mightiest minds, 
to solve the insoluble, to measure the immense, to explain 
the mysterious. From such have proceeded many cloudy 
falsehoods, a few checkered gleams, of clear light little, but 
the truth has still remained afar. " The depth saith. Not in 



I04 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 



me" Nay, others have, in desperation, plunged, professedly 
in search of truth, into pleasure or guilt ; they have gone 
to hell-gate itself, and have asked, Does the truth dwell here '? 
but destruction and death only say, with hollow laughter, 
" We have heard the fame of it with our ears." 

Standing above the prospective wreck of all such abortive 
replies, the author of Job discloses that path which the 
" vulture's eye hath not seen," and the gates of which no 
golden key can open — " Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is 
wisdom ; and to depart from evil is understanding." Simple 
the fingerpost, but it points out the truth. Here, at last, 
we find that portion of the universal knowledge, truth, or 
wisdom, which satisfies without cloying the mind^which 
reflects the inner man of the heart, as "face, face in a 
glass" — which gives a feeling of firm ground below us, firm 
if there be terra firma in the universe — and. on which have 
reposed, in death, the wisest of mankind. Newton laid not 
his dying head on his " Principia," but on his Bible ; Cow- 
per, not on his '• Task," but on his Testament ; Hall, not on 
his wide fame, but on his "humble hope ;" Michael Angelo, 
not on that pencil which alone coped with the grandeurs of 
the " Judgment," but on that grace which, for him, had shorn 
the judgment of its terrors ; Coleridge, not on his limitless 
genius, but on " Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame." 
Often must the wanderer mid American forests lay his head 
upon a rude log, while above it is the abyss of stars. Thus the 
weary, heavy-laden, dying Christian leans upon the rugged 
and narrow Cross, but looks up the while to the beaming 
canopy of immortal life — to those " things which are above." 
Calmly does Job propound the great maxim of man, 
though it might have justified even excess of rapture. 
Archimedes ran out shouting " Eureka !" Had he found 
the truth % No, but only one golden sand upon the shore 
of science. Nay, though he had found out all natural know- 
ledge at once; suppose he had, by one glance of genius, 
descried the axletree whence shoot out all the spokes of 
scientific truth — though louder far, in this case, had been his 
Eureka, and deeper far his joy — would he have found the 
truth % No ; it was in the wilderness of Arabia, and to the 
heart of a holy herdsman, that this inspiration at first came, 
and no cry of triumph proclaimed its coming, and no echo 
then reverberated it to the nations. 



POETRY OP THE BOOK OF JOB. 



105 



The entrance of the Deity into this poem is the most 
daring and the most successful of all poetic interventions. 
God himself turns the scale of the great argument. The 
bearing of his speech upon the whole scope of the poem falls 
afterwards to be noted. Meantime, let us look at the cir- 
cumstances of his appearance, and at the mode of his utter- 
ance. The disputants have enveloped themselves in a cloud 
of words. A whirlwind must now scatter it. They have 
been looking at the silver 'and golden sides of the shield ; 
both must now be blended and lost in the common darkness 
of the shadow of Grod. No vehicle for this awful umpire 
like a whirlwind. We cannot paint an oriental whirlwind ; 
but, some years ago, on a Sabbath afternoon, we saw a spec- 
tacle we shall never forget. It was the broad, bright, smo- 
thering sunshine of an August day. Not a speck was visible 
on the heavens, save one in the far south. Suddenly, as we 
gaze, that one speck broadens, darkens, opens into black 
wings, shuts again into a mass of solid gloom, rushes then, 
like a chariot of darkness, northward over the sky, till, in 
less time than we have taken to write these words, there is, 
over all the visible heaven and earth, the wail of wind, the 
roar of thunder, the pattering of hail, the fall of rain, the 
flash of lightning, and the rushing of swift waters along the 
ground. " It is a whirlwind !" wo exclaimed, as like a huge, 
sudden apparition, it seemed to stand up between us and the 
summer sky. " With God is terrible majesty." From such 
a car might an angry Deity descend. Out of such a black 
orchestra might God speak, and all flesh be silent before 
him. 

The speech is worthy of the accompaniments and of the 
speaker. It is a series of questions following each other like 
claps of thunder. Have our readers never fancied, during a 
thunder-storm, that each new peal was an ironical question, 
proposed to the conscience from the cloud, and succeeded by 
a pause of silence more satirical still ? Thus God, from his 
heaven, while pointing to his gallery of works, rising in 
climax to leviathan, laughs at the baffled power and wisdom 
of man ; and terrible is the glory of his snorting nostrils. 
The " question" in composition is often as searching and 
stringent as was the " question" of old in law. Abrupt, 
jagged, unanswered, it gives an idea of the Infinite, such as is 
given by a bust, or the broken limb of a statue. The slight 



I06 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 

tinge of contempt which mingles with it adds a strange 
flavor to its interest ; and, when repeated, it sounds like the 
voice of a warrior, shouting triumphantly in the ear of his 
dead, unreplying foeman. So have the masters of writing 
used it. Demosthenes abounds in what Hall calls those ter- 
rible interrogations, by which, after prostrating his opponents 
in argument, he proceeds to trample them in the mire — re- 
serving them, however, wisely, for the close of his orations. 
Barrow pursues some of his longest and finest trains of 
reasoning in this form. But the great modern master of 
this impressive inversion of truth is Foster, who never fails, 
in his " Essays," thus to cite the conscience or the soul to his 
bar, and cross-examine it amid such silence as the judgment- 
seat may witness, when a Mary, Queen of Scots, is summoned 
to put in her plea. In Job, the questions of God form the 
climax of the poem. You feel that they reach the highest 
possible point of sublimity ; and the pause which follows is 
profound as the stillness of the grave. The voice even of poetic 
melody, immediately succeeding, had seemed impertinent 
and feejble. The cry of penitence and humility, " Behold, I 
am vile," is alone fit to follow such a burst, and to cleave 
such a silence. 

To put suitable language into the mouth of Deity, haa 
generally tasked to straining, or crushed to feebleness, th€ 
genius of poets. Homer, indeed, at times, nobly ventrilo- 
quises from the top of Olympus ; but it is ventriloquism — ^ 
the voice of a man, not of a God — Homer's thunder, not 
Jove's. Milton, while impersonating God, falls flat ; he 
peeps and mutters from the dust ; he shrinks from seek- 
ing to fill up the compass of the Eternal's voice. Adequately 
to represent God speaking, required not only the highest 
inspiration, but that the poet had heard, or thought he had 
heard, his very voice shaping articulate sounds from midnight 
torrents, from the voices of the wind, from the chambers of 
the thunder, from the rush of the whirlwind, from the hush 
of night, and from the breeze of the day. And, doubtless, 
the author of Job had had this experience. He had lain on 
his bed at night, while his tent was shaking with what 
seemed the deep syllables of Jehovah's voice. He had 
heard God in the waters, unchained by midnight silence, and 
speaking to the stars. In other nameless and homeless 
Bounds of the wilderness, he had fancied distinct words of 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. I07 

counsel or of warning ; and when he came to frame a speech 
for God, did he not tune it to the rhythm of those well- 
remembered accents ; and on these, as on wings, did not his 
soul soar upwards into the highest heaven of song ? ?ome 
poems have risen to the note of the flute, and others to the 
swell of the organ ; but this highest reach of poetry rose to 
the music of the mightiest and oldest elements of nature 
combining to form the various parts in the one voice of Grod. 
And how this whirlwind of poetry, once aroused, storms 
along — how it ruflles the foundations of the earth — how it 
churns up the ocean into spray — how it unveils the old trea- 
sures of the hail and the snow — how it soars up to the stars — 
how the " lightnings say to it. Here we are" — how, stooping 
from this pitch, it sweeps over the curious, noble, or terrible 
creatures of the bard's country, rousing the mane of the 
lion, stirring the still horror of the raven's wing, racing with 
the wild ass into the wilderness, flying with the eagle and 
the hawk, shortening speed over the lazy vastnessof behemoth, 
awakening the thunder of the horse's neck, and daring to 
" open the doors of the face," with the teeth " terrible round 
about" of leviathan himself ! The truth, the literal exact' 
ness, the freshness, fire, and rapidity of the figures presented, 
resemble less the slow, elaborate work of a painter, than a 
succession of pictures, taken instantaneously by the finger 
of the sun, and true to the smallest articulation of the burn 
ing life. 

The close of the poem, representing Job's renewed pros- 
perity, is in singular contrast with the daring machinery and 
rich imagery of the rest of the book. It is simple and strange 
as a nursery tale. By a change as sudden as surprising, 
the wheel turns completely round. Job ri^es from the dust ; 
a golden shower descends, in the form of troops of friends, 
bringing with them silver and gold ; sheep and oxen, as if 
rising from the earth, fill his folds ; new sons and daughters 
are born to him ; the broad tree over his tent blooms and 
blossoms again ; and long, seated under its shadow, may he 
look ere he descry other messengers arriving breathless to 
announce the tidings of other woes. In Blake's illustrations 
of this book, not the least interesting or significant print is 
that representing the aged patriarch, seated in peace, sur- 
rounded by multitudes of singing men and singing women j 
camels, sheep, and oxen grazing in the distance ; and, from 



Io8 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JUB. 



above, God (an exact likeness of Job) smiling, well-pleased, 
upon this-fuU length portrait of the man perfect through 
suffering — the reconciled man. 

Perhaps, when Blake himself expired, the true and only 
key to his marvellous book of Illustrations (less a commen- 
tary on Job, than a fine though inferior variation of it) was 
lost. It were vain to recount the innumerable interpretations 
of the poem given by more prosaic minds than Blake's. Our 
notion has been already indicated. We think Job a dramatic 
and allegorical representation of the necessity, means, and 
consequences of the reconciliation of man the individual, 
shadowing out, in dim distance, the reconciliation of man the 
race on earthy but not, alas ! (as Blake seems to have intend- 
ed) the reconciliation of man the entire species in heaven. 
The great problem of this world is. How is man to be recon- 
ciled, or made at one^ with his Maker 1 He appears, as 
David describes himself, a " stranger on this earth." All 
elements, and almost all beings, are at war with him. He 
has nothing friendly at first, save the warmth of his mother's 
breast. Bain, cold, snow, even sunshine, beasts, and men, 
seem and are stern and harsh to his infant feelings and 
frame. As he advances, his companions, his schoolmasters, 
are, or appear to be, renewed forms of enmity. " What have 
I done to provoke such universal alienation?" is often his 
silent, suppressed feeling. The truths of art, science, nay, of 
God's word, are presented as if contradicting his first fresh 
feelings. Books, catechisms, schools, churches, he steals into, 
as if they were strange and foreign countries. At every step, 
he breathes a difficult air. Sustained, indeed, by the buoyant 
spirits of youth, he contrives to be cheerful amid his diffi- 
culties ; but at last the " Death-in-life " appears in his path — 
the dreadful question arises, " Must there not be something 
in me to provoke all this enmity ? Were / a different being, 
would to me every step seem a stumble, every flower a weed, 
every brow a frown, every path an enclosure, every bright 
day a gaud, every dark day a faithful reflector of misery, 
every hope a fear, and every fear the mask for some unknown 
and direr horror ? If it is not the universe, but I, that am 
dark, whence comes in me the shadow which so beclouds it ? 
Whence comes it, that I do not partake either of its active 
happiness, or of its passive peace 1 And seeing that the uni- 
verse is unreconciled to me, and I to the universe, must it 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 



109 



not be the same with its God, and who or what is to bridge 
across the gulf betwixt him and me ? If a finite creation re- 
pels me, how can I face the justice of an infinite God ? If 
time present me with little else than difficulties, what dangers 
and terrors may lurk in the heights and depths of eternity 7 
If often the wicked are prosperous and contented on earth, 
and the good afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comfort- 
ed, may not similar anomalies abound hereafter ? And how 
am I to be convinced that a system so strange as that around 
me is wise — that sufi"erings are salutary, and that its God is 
good ? And how, above all, is my personal unworthiness to 
be removed ? " 

Such is a general statement of the common difficulty. 
In various men it assumes various forms. In one man, a 
gloomy temperament so poisons all the avenues of his being, 
that to tell him to be happy and to worship, sounds at first 
as absurd as though you were giving the same counsel to 
one burning in a conflagration. Another is so spell-bound 
by the spectacle of moral evil, that he is able to do or say 
little else than ask the question — " WJience and ivhat art 
thou, execrable shape V' A third, sincere almost to lunacy, 
is driven doubly i- mad for the sight of his eyes which he 
doth see " — the sight of a world, as hollow in heart as some 
think it to be in physical structure. A fourth has his peace 
strangled by doubts as to the peculiar doctrines, or as to the 
evidences of his faith — doubts of a kind which go not out 
even by prayer and fasting. And a fifth, of pure life and 
benevolent disposition, becomes a mere target for the arrows 
of misfortune — at once a prodigy of excellence and a pro- 
verb of woe. 

This last case is that of Job, and, perhaps, of those now 
enumerated, the only one then very likely. But the resolu- 
tion of the difficulty he obtained applies to all the others 
unreconciled — it ought to satisfy them. How was Job 
instructed? By being taught — first, in part, through sufi"er- 
ing, and, secondly, through a manifestation of God's supe- 
riority to him — a childlike trust in God. Even amid his 
wailings of woe, he had falteringly expressed this feeling — ■ 
" Though he slay me, I will trust in him." But when he 
saw and felt God's greatness, as expounded by himself, he 
reasoned thus : One so great must be good — one so wise 
must mean me well by all my afflictions. I will distrust and 



no POETRY OF THE BOOK OP JOB. 

doubt him no more. I will loathe myself on account of my 
imperfect and unworthy views of him. 1 will henceforth 
confide in the great whole. I will fearlessly commit my 
"bark to the eternal ocean, and. come fair weather or foul, 
will believe that the wave which dashes, or the wave which 
drowns, or the wave which wafts to safety, is equally good. 
I will also repent, in dust and ashes, of my own vileness, 
and trust to forgiveness through the medium of the Great 
Sacrifice, which the smoke of my altar feebly symbolizes. 

Behold in this the outline of our reconciliation. The 
Creator of this great universe musi be good. Books of 
evidences, begone ! One sunset, one moonlight hour, one 
solemn meditation of the night, one conversation at even- 
ing with a kindred heart, is worth you all ! Such scenes, 
such moments, dissolve the most massive doubts easily and 
speedily as the evening air sucks down the mimic mountains 
of vapor which lie along the verge of heaven. The sense 
given is but that, indeed, of beauty and power — transcend- 
ent beauty, and power illimitable ; but is there not insinu- 
ated something more — a lesson of love as transcendent, and 
of peace as boundless ? Does not the blue sky give us an 
unutterable sense of security and of union, as it folds 
around us like the curtain of a tent ? Do not the stars dart 
down glances of warm intelligence and affection, secret and 
real as the looks of lovers ? Do not tears, torments, evils, 
and death, seem at times to melt and disappear in that gush 
of golden glory, in that stream of starry hope which the 
milky way pours each night through the heavens ? Say not 
with Carlyle, " It is a sad sight." Sad ! the sight of beauty, 
splendor, order, motion, progress, power. Godhead — how can 
it be sad ? Man, indeed, must at present weep as well as 
wonder, as he looks above. Be it so. We have seen a child 
weeping bitterly on his mother's knee, while the train was 
carrying him triumphantly on. " Poor child !" we thought, 
" why weepest thou ? Thy mother's arms are around thee, 
thy mother's eye is fixed upon thee, and that bustle and 
rapidity, so strange and dreadful to thee, are but carrying 
thee faster to thy home." Thus man wails and cries, with 
God above, God around, God below, and God before him. 
Not always shall he thus weep. But other elements are 
still wanting in his reconciliation. It is not necessary merely 
that power, beauty, and wisdom lead to the conception of 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF OB. Ill 

God's goodness and love, but that suffering, by perfecting 
patience, by teaching knowledge, should, while humbling 
man's pride, elevate his position, and put into his hands the 
most powerful of all telescopes — that of a tear. " Perfect 
through suffering " must man become ; and, then, how do 
all apparent enemies soften into friends ! how drop down 
all disguises ; and misfortunes, losses, fevers, falls, deaths, 
stand out naked, detected, and blushing lovers. 

One thing more, and the atonement is complete. Man 
has about him another burden besides that of misery — it is a 
burden of sin. To this he cannot be reconciled. This must 
be taken away ere he can be perfectly at one with the uni- 
verse or its Maker. This, by the great sacrifice at Calvary, 
and the sanctifying power of the Spirit, has been taken away ; 
and now, whoever, convinced of God's benevolence by the 
voice of his own soul echoing the language of the creation — 
satisfied, from experience, of the benefits of suffering — is 
also forgiven, through Christ, his iniquities, stands forth to 
view the reconciled man. Be he of dark disposition, his 
gloom is now tempered, if not removed ; he looks at it as the 
pardoned captive at his iron bars the last evening of his im- 
prisonment. Be he profoundly fascinated by moral evil, even 
with its dark countenance a certain morning twilight begins 
to mingle. Has he been sick of the hollowness of the world, 
now he feels that that very hollowness secures its explosion — 
it must give place to a truer system. Has he entertained 
doubts — he drowns them in atoning blood. Has he suffered 
— his sufferings have left on the soil of his mind a rich de- 
posit, whence are ready to spring the blossoms of Eden, and 
to shine the colors of heaven. Thus reconciled, how high his 
attitude, how dignified his bearing ! He knows not what it 
is to fear. Having become the friend of God, he can look 
above and around him with the eye of universal friendship. 
In the blue sky he dwells, as in a warm nest. The clouds 
and mountains seem ranged around him, like the chariots and 
horses of fire about the ancient prophet. The roar of wicked- 
ness itself, from the twilight city, is attuned into a melody, 
the hoarse beginning of a future anthem. Flowers bloom on 
every dunghill — light gushes from every gloom — the grave 
itself smiles up in his face — and his own frame, even if de- 
caying, is the loosened and trembling leash which, when 
broken, shall let his spirit spring forth, free and exulting, 



112 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 

amid the liberties, the light, the splendors, and the " powers 
of the world to come." * 



CHAPTER VI. 

POETRY OP THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 

The entire history of Israel is poetical and romantic. Be- 
sides the leading and wide events we have already indicated, 
as nourishing the spirit of Hebrew poetry — such as the crea- 
tion, the flood, the scene at Sinai — there were numerous 
minor sources of poetic influence. The death of Moses in 
the sight of the promised land ; the crossing of the river Jor- 
dan ; the wars of Canaan ; the romantic feats of Samson ; the 
immolation of Jephtha's daughter, the Iphigenia of Israel ; 
the story of Ruth, " standing amid the alien corn," with all 
its simplicity and pathos; the rise of David, harp in hand, 
from " the ewes with young," to the throne of his country ; 
his adventurous, checkered, and most poetical history ; the 
erection of the temple, that fair poem of God's ; the separa- 
tion of the tribes; the history and ascent of Elijah; the call- 
ing of Elisha from the plough ; the downfall of the temple ; 
the captivity of Babylon ; the return from it ; the rise of the 
new temple, amid the tears of the old men, who had seen the 
glories of the former — these, and many others, were events 
which, touching again and again, at short and frequent inter- 
vals, the rock of the Hebrew heart, brought out another and 
another gush of poetry. 

We speak not now of David's Psalms, or those which fol- 
lowed his time, but of those songs which are sprinkled through 
the historical works of Joshua, Judges and Samuel (inclusive 
of one or two of David's strains), and which shine as sparkles 
struck off from the rolling wheel of Jewish story. It is beau- 
tiful to see history thus flowering into poetry — the heroic deed 
living in the heroic lay — the glory of the field, separated from 
its gore, purified, and, like the everburning fire of the temple, 
set before the Lord of Hosts. What Macaulay's " Lays of 

* The author means, if God spare him, to develop further his views 
of the reconciliation of man, in another, and probably a fictitious, 
form. 



POETRY Ot THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. I15 

Ancient Rome" have done for the fabulous legends and half- 
true traditions of Roman story, have Jasher, Iddo, Deborah, 
and David, in a higher and holier manner, done for the real- 
battles and miracles which stud the annals of God's chosen 
people. 

Need we refer to the grand myth — if such it be — of the 
standing still of the sun over Gibeon, and of the moon over 
the valley of Ajalon. Supposing this literally true, what a 
picture of the power of mind over inatter — of inspired mind 
over passive matter ! The one word of the believing man 
has arrested the course of nature. His stern, commanding 
eye has enlisted the very sun into his service, and the moon 
seems a device upon his banner. It is a striking verification 
of the words, " All things are possible to him that believeth." 
That matter which yields reluctantly to the generalizations 
of science, is plastic, as soft clay, in the hands of faith. Suns 
and systems dance to the music of the throbs from a great 
heart. Should we, on the contrary, suppose this a poetical 
parable, and thus rid ourselves of the physical difficulties, 
how grandly does it express modern experiences ! Has not 
man, through astronomy, made the sun stand still, and the 
earth revolve ? Did not the genius of Napoleon arrest the suii 
of Austerlitz, for many a summer, over his fields of slain ? Is 
not each extension of the power of the telescope causing 
firmaments to yield, to recede, to draw near, to dissolve, to 
curdle, to stand, to move, to assume ten thousand various 
forms, colors, and dimensions'? Is not man each year feeling 
himself more at home in his house, more at liberty to range 
through its remoter apartments, with more command over its 
elements, and with a growing consciousness, that his empire 
shall yet be complete? Joshua commanding the sun and 
moon, is but an emblem of the man of the future, turning 
and winding the universe, like a " fiery Pegasus," below him, 
on his upward and forward career. 

Deborah — ^what a strong solitary ray of light strikes from 
her story and song, upon the peaks of the past ! A mother in 
Israel, the wise woman of her neighborhood, curing diseases, 
deciding differences, perhaps, at times, conducting the devo- 
tions of her people — how little was she, or were they, aware 
of the depth which lay in her heart and in her genius. It 
required but one action and one strain to cover her with 
glory. In her, as in all true women, lay a quiet fund of 



Il6 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 

strength, virtue, and courage, totally unsuspected by herself. 
While others wondered at her sudden patriotism and poetry, 
she wondered more than they. The Great Spirit, seeking for 
a vent through which to pour a flood of ruin upon the in- 
vaders of Israel, found this woman sitting under her paJm- 
tree, on the mountain -side, and she started up at his bidding". 
" I, Deborah, arose." The calm matron becomes the Nemesis 
of her race, the mantle of Miriam falls on her shoulders, and 
the sword of Joshua flames from her hand. This prophetic 
fury sinks not, till the enemy of her country is crushed, and 
till she has told the tidings to earth, to heaven, and to all 
after-time. And then, like a sword dropped from a hero's 
side, she quietly falls back into her peaceful solitude again. 
It is Cincinnatus resuming his plough-handle in mid-furrow. 
How wonderful are those gusts which surprise and uplift men, 
and women too, into greatness — a greatness before unknown, 
and terrible even to themselves. 

In her song, the poetry of war comes to its culmination. 
Not the hoofs of many horses, running to battle, produce 
such a martial music, as do her prancing words. How she 
rolls the fine vesture of her song in blood ! How she dares 
to liken her doings to the thunder-shod steps of the God of 
Sinai ! The song begins with God, and with God it ends. 
One glance — no more — is given to the desolations which pre- 
ceded her rising. Praises, like sunbeams, are made to fall 
on the crests of those who perilled themselves with her, in 
the high places of the field. Questions of forked lightning 
are flung at the recreant tribes. " Why did Dan abide in 
ships ?" Ah ! Dan was a serpent in the way, biting the 
horse-heels, and causing the rider to fall backwards ; but 
here he is stung and stumbled himself ! Over one village, 
Meros, she pauses to pour the concentration of her ire, and 
the "curse causeless doth not come." For the brave, the 
light of Goshen ; for the recreants, the night of Egypt ; but 
for the neutral, the gloom of Gehenna ! " All power," then, 
'•' is given her," to paint the battle itself; and it, and all 
its scenery, from the stars above, fighting against Sisera, to 
the river Kishon below, that " ancient river," rolling away in 
indignation the last relics of the enemy, appear before us. 
Then her imagination pursues the solitary Sisera, unhelmed, 
pale, and panting, to the tent of Heber, and with a yet firmer 
nerve, and a yet holier hypocrisy, she re-enacts the part of 



POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 



117 



Jael, and slays again her slain. And then, half in triumph, 
and half in the tenderness which often mingles with it, she 
sees the mother of Sisera looking out at her window, with 
the flush of hope on her cheek fading into the deathlike pale- 
ness of a mother's disappointment and a mother's anguish ; 
and then — for Deborah, too, " is a mother in Israel" — she 
can no more, she shuts the scene, she drops the lattice, and 
her voice falters, though her faith is firm, as she exclaims, 
" So let all thine enemies perish, Lord ; but let them that 
love him be as the sun, when he goeth forth in his might." 

It is a baptized sword which Deborah bears. It is a bat- 
tle of the Lord which she fights. It is a defensive warfare 
that her song hallows. " Carnage," says Wordsworth, " is 
Grod's daughter." We reverenced and loved the Poet of the 
Lakes, whose genius was an honor to his species, and whose 
life was an honor to his genius ; but seldom has a poet writ- 
ten words more mischievous, untrue, and (unintentionally) 
blasphemous, than these. We all remember Byron's infer- 
ence from it, " If Carnage be God's daughter, she must be 
Christ's sister." Blasphemous ! but the blasphemy is Words- 
worth's, not Byron's. Here the skeptic becomes the Chris- 
tian, and the Christian the blasphemer. If Carnage be God's 
daughter, so must evil and sin be. No, blessed be the name 
of our God ! He does not smile above the ruin of smoking 
towns ; he does not snuff up the blood of a Borodino, or a 
Waterloo, as a dark incense ; he does not say, over a shell- 
split fortress, or over the dying decks of a hundred dismasted 
vessels, drifting down the trembling water on the eve of a 
day of carnage, " It is very good ;" he is the Prince of Peace, 
and his reign, when universal, shall be the reign of universal 
brotherhood. And yet, we will grant to Carnage a royal 
origin ; she is, if not the daughter of our God, yet of a god, 
of the god of this wwld. But shame to those who would lay 
down the bloody burden at the door of the house of the God 
of Mercy — a door which has opened to many an orphan and 
many a foundling, but which will not admit this forlorn child 
of hell. 

Never did genius more degrade herself than when gilding 
the fields and consecrating the banners of unjust or equivocal 
war. Here, the gift of Scott himself resembles an eagle's 
feather, transferred from the free wing of the royal bird to 
the cap of some brutal chieftain. The sun and the stars must 



Il8 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 

lend their light to the worst atrocities of the battlefield, but 
surely genius is not bound by the same compulsion. De 
Quincy has lately predicted the immortality of war : we an- 
swer him in the language of a book, the authority of which 
he acknowledges. Neither shall they learn war any more. 

Between the time of Deborah and David, we find little 
express poetry. One fable there is, that of Jotham — " the 
trees choosing a king" — besides the all-beautiful book of 
Ruth. 

The first fable, as the first disguise assumed by Truth, 
must be interesting. Since Jotham uttered the fierce moral 
of his parable, and fled for his life, in what a number of 
shapes has Truth sought for refuge, safety, decoration, point, 
or power ! Hid by him in trees, she has afterwards lurked 
in flowers, spoken in animals, surged in waves, soared in 
clouds, burned over the nations in suns and stars, ventrilo- 
quised from mines below and from mountains above, created 
other worlds for her escape, and, when hunted back to the 
family of mankind, has made a thousand new variations of 
the human species, as disguizes for her shy and tremulous 
self ! Whence this strange evasiveness 1 It is partly because 
Truth, like all her true friends, loves to unbend and disport 
herself at times ; because Truth herself is but a child, and 
has not yet put away all childish things ; because Truth is a 
beauty, and loves, as the beautiful do, to look at and show 
herself in a multitude of mirrors ; because Truth is a lover 
of nature, and of all lovely things ; because Truth, who can 
only stammer in the language of abstractions, can speak in 
the language of forms ; because Truth is a fugitive, and in 
danger, and must hide in many a bosky bourn and many a \ 
shady arbor ; because Truth, in her turn, is dangerous, and 
must not show herself entire, else the first look were the 
last ; and because Truth would beckon us on, by her very 
bashfulness, to follow after her, to her own land, where she 
may still continue to hide in heaven, as she has hid in earth 
— but amid forests, and behind shades of scenery so colossal, 
that it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive 
thereof 

And seldom (to look a little back in the narrative) did 
Truth assume a quainter disguise, than when she spoke from 
the lips of Balaam, the son of Beor. Inclined as we are, 
with Herder, to assign to his prophecies a somewhat later 



POETRY OP THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 



119 



date than is usually supposed, we do not for that reason 
deny their authenticity or genuineness. They bring before 
us the image of the first godless poet — the first who " pro- 
faned the God-giving strength, and marred the lofty line." 
Having been, perhaps, at first a true prophet, and a genius, 
he had become a soothsayer, but was surprised and forced 
into a true prophet again. His words come forth from his 
lips, like honey from the carcass of the lion — " meat from 
the eater." We figure him always with gray hair and a 
Danton visage ; the brow lofty and broad ; the eye small, 
leering, fierce ; the lips large and protruding. Poetry has not 
often lighted on a point so tempting as that rock-like brow ; 
licentiousness has blanched tha hair, and many sins and abo- 
minations are expressed in his lower face. But look how the 
Spirit of the Lord now covers him with an unusual and 
mighty afflatus — how he struggles against it as against a 
shirt of poison, but in vain — how his eye at length steadies 
sullenly into vision — and how his lips, after writhing, as 
though scorched, open their wide and slow portals to utter 
the blessing. He feels himself — eye, brow, soul, all but 
heart — caught in the power of a mighty one ; and he must 
speak or burn ! As it is, the blessing blisters his tongue, 
like a curse, and he has found only in its utterance a milder 
misery. 

Beautiful, notwithstanding Balaam, is the scene in Num- 
bers. It is the top of Pisgah, where the feet of Moses are 
soon to stand in death. But now seven altars are sending 
up the crackling smoke of their burnt-offerings — the fat of 
bullocks and rams has been transmuted into a rich and far- 
seen flame — Balak and the Princes of Moab surround the 
sacrifices, and gaze anxiously upon the troubled face of the 
seer ; while around stand up, grim and silent, as if waiting 
the result, Mounts Nebo and Peer ; behind stretches the 
Land of Promise, from the Dead Sea to the Lebanon ; and 
before are the white tents, the Tabernacle, and the bright 
cloud, suspended, veil-like and vast, over the camp of Israel. 
" 'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life one glance at that 
array." The soul of Balaam, the poet, rises to his lips, but 
would linger long there, or come forth only in the fury of 
curse, did not the whisper of God at the same moment touch 
his spirit ; and how his genius springs to that spur. To his 
excited imagination, the bright finger of the cloud over the 



I20 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 

camp seems the horn of a " unicorn ;" the camp itself, couch- 
ing in the valley, is a " great lion," waiting to rear himself, to 
drink the blood of the slain ; no " divination" can move that 
finger pointing to Canaan and to Moab ; no " enchantment" 
can chain that " Lion of the tribe of Judah." It is over — 
he drops his rod of imprecation, and to the crest-fallen 
Princes exclaims — " God hath blessed^ and I cannot reverse 

it:' 

From point to point he is taken, but, even as his ass was 
waylaid at every step by the angel, so is his evil genius met 
and rebuked under a better spirit, till each mount in all 
that high range becomes a separate source of blessing to the 
"people dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the na- 
tions." Trembling in the memory and the remaining force 
of the vision, the prophet at length pursues eastward his soli- 
tary journey, and, trembling in the terror of Israel, Balak - 
also goes his way. 

Genius has indeed a hard task to perform when she turns, 
or seeks to turn, against God. In proportion to the resem- 
blance she bears him, is the misery of the rebellion. It is 
not the clay rising against the potter — it is the sunbeam 
against the sun. But here, too, we find righteous compensa- 
tion. Sometimes the parricidal power is palsied in the blow. 
Thus, Paine found the strong right hand, which in the 
'' Rights of Man" had coped with Burke, shivered, when, in 
the " Age of Reason," it touched the ark of the Lord. Some- 
times, with the blasphemy of the strain, there is blended a 
wild beauty, or else a mournful discontent, which serves to 
carry off or to neutralize the evil effect. Shelley, for in- 
stance, has made few converts : a system which kept him so 
miserable cannot make others happy or hopeful — and you 
cry besides, that very beauty and love of which he raves are 
vague abstractions, till condensed into a form. Others, 
again, lapped generally in the enjoyment or dream of a 
sensual paradise, which is often disturbed by the feeling or 
the fear of a sensuous hell, sometimes through their dream 
chant fragments of psalms, snatches of holy melodies learned 
in childhood ; or, awakening outright, feel a power over them 
compelling them to utter the truth of heaven in strains which 
had too often fanned by turn every evil passion of earth ; 
and, behold, a Burns and Byron, as well as a Saul and a Ba- 
laam, are among the prophets. Does their genius thus exer- 






1 



'7/ I'iy/ "^JJ 



"SPEAK, LORD, FOR THY SERVANT HEARETH. 



POETRY OP THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 1 23 

cised seem strange as a parable in the mouth of fools 1 How 
stranger far to superior beings must be the spectacle of o,ny 
species of genius revolting against its own higher nature in 
revolting against its Grod ! 

Let, then, Balaam, the son of Beor, pass on toward the 
mountains of the East. We follow him with mingled emo- 
tions of disgust and admiration, fear and pity — pity, for the 
sword is already trembling over his head ; he who conspired 
not with Moab shall soon conspire with Midian, and shall 
perish in the attempt. It is but one lucid peak in his his- 
tory that we see — all behind and before is darkness ; nor 
can we expect for him even the tremendous blessing — 
" Tlierefcrre eternal silence be his doom?'' 

In the First Book of Samuel, we find at least three speci- 
mens of distinct poetry — the ode or thanksgiving, the satire, 
and the ghost scene. The first is the song of Hannah. This 
is interesting, principally, as the finest utterance of the gene- 
ral desire for children which existed in Jewish females, and 
which exists in females still. We deduce from this not 
merely the inference that the Jews expected a Messiah, but 
also that there is in human hearts a yearning after a nobler 
shape of humanity, and that this yearning is itself a proof of 
its prophecy, and of the permanence and progressive advance- 
ment of that race which, notwithstanding ages of anguish 
and disappointment, continues to thirst for and to expect its 
own apotheosis. 

And are not all after satire and invective against mon- 
archy and kings condensed in Samuel's picture of the ap- 
proaching " King Stork" of Israel ? We quote it entire :. — 
" And this will be the manner of the king that shall reign 
over you : He will take your sons, and appoint them for him- 
self, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen ; and some shall 
run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains 
over thousands, and captains over fifties ; and will set them 
to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his 
instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And 
he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be 
cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and 
your vineyards, and your olive-yards, even the best of them, 
and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth 
of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, 
and to his servants. And he will take your men-servants, 
9 



124 POETRY OP THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 

and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men^ arid 
your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the 
tenth of your sheep ; and ye shall be his servants. And ye 
shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall 
have chosen you ; and the Lord will not hear you in that- 
day." What a quiet refreshing vein of sarcasm enlivens the 
stern truth of this passage ! Sheep and asses are the last 
and least victims to the royal vulture — men and women are 
his favorite quarry. 

Ere coming to the Cave of Endor, we must glance at the 
actors in the celebrated scene. 

The first is Samuel, who had been brought up in Hannah's 
hand to the Temple service — ^who had, with his curling locks 
and " little coat," eagerly officiated as a young priest there — 
who had been awakened at midnight by the voice of Grod — 
through whose little throat came accents of divine wrath 
which stunned Eli's heart, and made the flesh-hooks of his 
sons tremble amid their sacrilege — who stood behind the 
smoke of the sacrifice of a sucking lamb, with his hands up- 
lifted to heaven, while behind were his cowering countrymen ; 
before, the army of the Philistines ; and above, a blue sky, 
which gradually darkened into tempest, thunder, dismay, and 
destruction to the invaders — ^who anointed Saul — who hewed 
Agag in pieces — who entered amazed Bethlehem like a God, 
and, neglecting the tall sons of Jesse, chose David, the fair- 
haired and blooming child of genius — who again, at Grilgal, 
summoned the lightnings, which said to him, " Here we are" — 
and who, at last, was buried in Ramah, his own city, with 
but one mourner — all Israel, which " rose and buried him." 
Son of the barren woman, consecrated to God from thy 
birth, " king of kings," lord of thunders, how can even the 
strong grave secure thee 1 Nay, ere it fully can, thou must 
look up from below once more to perform another act of 
king-quelling power ! 

The second actor in the scene is Saul, whose character is 
more complex in its elements. Indolent, yet capable of great 
exertion ; selfish, yet with sparks of generosity ; fitful in 
temper, vindictive in disposition, confusedly brave, irregu- 
larly liberal, melancholy — mad, without genius, possessed of 
strong attachments, stronger hatreds and jealousies, neither a 
tyrant nor a good prince, neither thoroughly bad nor good, 
whom you neither can " bless nor ban," he is one of the non- 



POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 



125 



descripts of history. He reminds us most of the gloomy- 
tyrant of Scotland — Macbeth. Like him, he has risen from 
a lower station ; like him, he has cemented his tottering 
throne by blood ; like him, he is possessed by an evil spirit, 
though, in Saul's case, it does not take the form of a wife- 
fiend ; like him, too, he is desperate — the Philistines are 
upon him — David is at a distance — Samuel sleeps in E-amah — 
God has refused to answer him by prophets, or Urim, or 
dreams ; and he must now, like Macbeth in his extremity, 
go and knock at the door of hell. 

The third actor is the witch of Endor. A borderer be- 
tween earth and hell, her qualities are rather those of the 
former than of the latter. She has little weird or haggard 
grandeur. So far as we can apprehend her, she was a vulgar 
conjurer, herself taken by surprise, and caught in her own 
snare. She owns (if we may compare a fictitious with a real 
person) little kindred to the witches of "Macbeth," with 
their faces faded and their raiment withered in the infernal 
fire ; their supernatural age and ugliness ; the wild mirth 
which mingles with their malice ; the light, dancing measure 
to which their strains are set, and which adds greatly to their 
horror, as though* a sentence of death were given forth in 
doggrel ; the odd gusto with which they handle and enume- 
rate all unclean and abominable things ; the strange sym- 
pathy with which they may almost be said to /<2?Z6-^ their vic- 
tims ; their dream-like conveyance ; the new and complete 
mythology with which they are allied ; and the uncertainty 
in which you are left as to their nature, origin, and history ; — 
nor to those of Scott and Burns^ who are just malicious old 
Scotch hags, corrupted into witches. 

Such are the actors. How striking the scene ! "We must 
figure for ourselves the witch's place of abode. The sha- 
dows of night are resting on Mount Tabor. Four miles 
south of it, lies, near Endor, a ravine deep sunk and wooded. 
It is a dreary and deserted spot, hedged round by a circle of 
evil rumors, through which nothing but despair dare pene- 
trate. But there a torrent wails to the moon, and the moon 
smiles lovingly to the torrent ; and thick jungle, starred at times 
by the eyes of fierce animals, conceals this wild amour ; and there 
stands the hut of the hag, near which you descry a shed for 
cattle, which have been, or have been bought by, the wages of 
her imposture. A knock is heard at her door ; and, starting 



126 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 



instantly from the thin sleep of guilt, she opens it, after 
arousing her accomplices. Three men, disguised, but not so 
deeply as to disguise from her experienced eye the features 
of lurid fear and ferocity, ask to be, and are, admitted. One, 
taller, by the head and shoulders, than the rest, opens, in 
gloomy tones, the gloomy interview, and asks her to bring 
up whom he should name. Not suspecting this to be Saul — 
and yet, to whom else could belong that towering stature, 
that martial form, and the high yet hurried accents of 
that king-like misery ? — she reminds him that Saul had cut 
off all that had familiar spirits from the land, and that this 
might be a snare set for her life. Stung, it may be, at this 
allusion to one of his few good deeds, in hot and hasty 
terms he swears to secure her safety. The woman, satisfied, 
asks whom she is to invoke, trusting, probably, to sleight-of- 
hand, on her part or her accomplices', to deceive the stranger. 
He cries aloud for Samuel — the once hated, the now greatly 
desired, even in his shroud — and while he is yet speaking, 
his prayer is answered. Samuel, upraising himself through 
the ground, is seen by the woman. Horrified at the unex- 
pected sight, and discovering, at the same moment, the 
identity of Saul, she bursts into wild shrieks — " Thou art 
Saul !" Slowly shaping into distinct form, and curdling 
into prophetic costume, from the first vague and indefinite 
shade, appears an " old man covered with a mantle." It is 
" Samuel even himself" The grave has yielded to the 
whisper of Omnipotence, and to the cry of despair. Fixing 
his eye upon the cowering and bending Saul, he asks the rea- 
son of this summons. Saul owns his extremity ; and then 
the ghrst, slow disappearing, as he had slowly risen, seems 
to melt down into those awful accents, which fall upon Saul's 
ear as " blood mingled with fire," and which leave him a 
mere molten residuum of their power upon the ground — 
*^ To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me" — shadows 
in a world where the " light is as darkness." " Then fell 
Saul along the earth" — a giant chilled and prostrated by a 
vapor. And how similar the comfort offered through the 
witch of Endor to the fallen Monarch of Israel to the dance 
of Macbeth's infernal comforters ! Shakspeare must have 
had Endor in his eye : 

" Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprights, 
And show the best of our delights j 



POETRY OP THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 1 29 

I'll charra the air to give a sound, 
While 5'ou perform your antique round : 
That this great king may kindly say, 
Our duties did his welcome pay." 

To this dance, performed to cheer the cheerless, we may 
liken the calf^ killed in haste, and in haste eaten, by one who 
shall never partake another meal. But here Macbeth rises 
above his prototype. He drinks the " wildflower wine" of 
destiny — goes forth enlarged by the draught — and at last 
dies in broad battle, with his harness on his back ; whereas, 
Saul perishes on the morrow, by his own hand. 

And who was his chief mourner % Who sung his 
threnody — a threnody the noblest ever sung by poet over 
king ? It was a laureate whom his death had elected to the 
office — it was David. His " Song of the Bow " — which he 
taught to Israel, till it became such a household word of 
national sorrow as the " Flowers of the Forest " among 
ourselves — is one of the shortest as well as sweetest of 
lyrics. It is but one gasp of genius, and yet remains mu- 
sical in the world's ear to this hour. It is difficult, by a 
single stroke upon the great heart of man, to produce a 
sound which shall reverberate till it mingle with the last 
trump ; and yet, this did David in Ziklag. On a wild torn 
leaf floating past him, he recorded his anguish ; and that 
leaf, as if all the dew denied to the hills of Gilboa had 
rested on it, is still fresh with immortality. " How are the 
mighty fallen ;" " tell it not in Gath ;" '• they were lovely in 
their lives, and in their death not divided ; " thy love to me 
was wonderful, passing the love of women " — these touches 
of nature, and accents of music, have come down to us en- 
tire, as if all the elements had conspired that such sounds 
should never perish. A lesson to all who write or speak ! 
Speak from the inmost hearty and your word, though as 
little, is as safe, as Moses in his ark of bulrushes. Unseen 
hands are stretched forth from all sides to receive and to 
guard it. It becomes a part of the indestructible essence 
of things. The poet's name may perish ; or, though it re- 
main, may represent no intelligible character; but the 
"Flowers of the Forest" and '-Donocht-head" must be sung 
and wept over while the earth endureth. Grrasp, though it 
were with your finger, the horns of nature's altar, and you 
shall never be torn away. Let the world be ever so hurried 



I^O POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 

in her transition from age to age, she never can forget to 
carry her least household gods along with her. 

The picture in this " Bow Song" is perfect in its simpli- 
city. On the high places of their last field stand Saul and 
Jonathan, soon to be twins in death. Swifter are they than 
eagles, and stronger than lions. Beautiful are their feet 
upon the mountains. Courage gleams in the eyes of both ; 
but in Saul it is the courage of despair. The scene of En- 
dor still swims before his view, and the mantle of Samuel 
darkens the day. The battle is joined. The Philistines 
press his army sore. Jonathan is slain before his eyes. 
Young, strong, and beautiful, he yields to a stronger than 
he. Saul himself is wounded by the archers. The giant 
totters toward the ground, which is already wet with his 
blood. Feeling his fate inevitable, he asks his armor-bearer 
to save, by slaying him, from the hands of the uncircum- 
cised. He refuses — the unfortunate throws himself on his 
own sword, and you hear him crying with his final breath — 
" Not the Philistines, but thou, unquiet spirit of Ramah, 
hast overcome me." From the hills of Grilboa, the imagi- 
nation of David leaps to Gath, and hears the shout with 
which the tidings of the king's death are received there. 
But there mingles with it, in his ear, a softer, yet more pain- 
ful sound. It is the wail of Israel's women, almost forget- 
ting their individual losses in that of Saul, their stately 
monarch, and Jonathan, his ingenuous son. And how do 
years of ordinary sorrow seem collected in the words which 
had long struggled obscurely in David's bosom, and often 
trembled on his lips, but never been expressed till now, 
when, in the valley of the shadow of death, friendship be- 
came a name too feeble for his feelings — " My brot/ier Jona- 
than !" If death dissolves dear relationships, it also creates 
others dearer still. Then, possibly, for the first time, the 
brother becomes a friend ; but then also the friend is often 
felt to be more than the brother. 

But we may not tarry longer on these dark and dewless 
hills. "We pass to that hold in the wilderness, which David 
has not yet, but is soon to quit, for a capital and a throne. 
A sentence makes that hold visible, as if set in fir^ : — " And 
of the Gradites, there separated themselves unto David into 
the hold in the wilderness, men of might, and men of war 
for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler, whoso 



POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 



131 



faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the 
roes upon the mountains." " There is," says Aird, " an Iliad 
of heroes in these simple words. Suppose David had his 
harp in his hand, in the hold, and worshipped with his war- 
riors the God of Israel (in light introduced from the top of 
the cave), what a picture for Salvator or Rembrandt ; or, 
rather, the whole effect is beyond the reach of the pictorial 
art. The visages and shapes, majestic in light and shadow, 
in that rock-ribbed den, could be given on the canvass, 
but nothing save the plastic power of poetry could lighten 
the darkly-congregated and proscribed cave, with the sweet 
contrasted relief of the wild roes without, unbeleaguered and 
free, on the green range of the unmolested hills. The verse 
is a perfect poem." 

The mulberry-trees next arise before us, surmounting the 
valley of Rephaim. In themselves there is little poetry. 
But on their summits you now hear a sound, the sound of 
" a going" — mysterious, for not a breath of wind is in the 
sky ; it is the "going" of invisible footsteps, sounding a signal 
from God to David to press his enemies hard. We have 
often realized the image, as we listened to the wind, of innu- 
merable tiny footsteps travelling upon the leaves, their mi- 
nute, incessant, measured, yet rapid dance. It seemed at once 
music and dancing; and, had it ceased in an instant, would 
have reminded you of the sudden silence of a ball-room, which 
a flash of lightning had entered. It struck the soul of Burns, 
who, perhaps, heard in it the sound of spirits sullenly bend- 
ing to overwhelming destiny, and found it reflective of his 
own history But in the scene at Bephaim, it appeared as 
if armies were moving along the high tops of the trees ; as, 
in " Macbeth," the wood began to move. Nature, from her 
high green places, seemed making common cause against the 
invader ; and, in the windless waving of the boughs, was 
heard the cheer of inevitable victory. Would to God, that, 
in the silence of the present expectation of the Church, a 
" going," even as of the stately steps of Divine Majesty, were 
heard above, to re-assure the timid among the Church's 
friends, and to abash the stout-hearted among her foes. 

From the thick of poetical passages and events in the 
other parts of Jewish history, we select a few — the fewer, 
that the mountains of prophecy which command at every point 
the history remain to be scaled. We find in Nathan's para- 



132 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 

ble "a lamb for a burnt-offering," the simplest of stories, 
producing the most tremendous of beart-quakes. No four 
words in any language are simpler, and none stronger, than 
the words, " Thou art the Man." What effect one quiet 
sentence can produce ! The whispers of the gods, how strong 
and thrilling ! Nathan, that gentle prophet, becomes sur- 
rounded with the grandeur of an apparition, and his words 
fall like the slow, heavy drops of a thunder-shower. The 
princely, gallant king quails before him ; and how can you 
recognize the author of the 18th Psalm, with its fervid and 
resistless rush of words and images, like coals of fire, in that 
poor prostrate worm, grovelling on the ground, and afraid of 
the eyes of his own servants ? 

The genius of David remains for the analysis of the next 
chapter. But we must not omit the darkest and most poetic 
hour in all his history, when he cast himself into the hands 
of God rather than of men ; and, when under the fiery sword 
and the menacing angel, we can conceive admiration for the 
magnificence of the spectacle, contending with terror — his 
cheek pale, but his eye burning — the king in panic — the poet 
in transport, and grasping instinctively for a harp he had not 
to express his high-strung emotions. Lightning pausing ere 
it strikes — the poison of Pestilence, hung over the " high- 
viced city" in the sick air — Death, in the fine fiction of Le 
Sage, coming up to the morning Madrid — must yield to this 
figure leaning over the devoted city of God, while both earth 
and heaven seem waiting to hear the blow which shall break 
a silence too painful and profound. 

Besides Solomon's Proverbs and Poems, there are in his 
life certain incidents instinct with imagination. The choice 
of Hercules is a fine apologue, but has not the sublimity or 
the completeness of the choice of Solomon. 

Then there are the sublime circumstances of the dedi- 
cation of the temple ; the pomp of the procession by which 
the ark was brought up from the city of David to the prouder 
resting-place his son had prepared ; the assemblage of all 
Israel to witness the solemnity ; the sacrifice of innumerable 
sheep and oxen covering the temple and dimming the day 
with a cloud of fragrance ; the slow march of the priests, 
through the courts and up the stairs of the glorious fabric, 
till the SANCTUARY was reached ; the music which attended 
the march, peopling every corner and crevice of the building 



POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 



^35 



With voluminous and searching swell ; the moment when the 
sudden ceasing of the music, in mid-volume, told the people 
without that the ark was now resting in its " own place;" the 
louder strain, of cymbals, psalteries, harps, and trumpets, 
which awoke when the priests retiirned from the most holy 
place ; the slow coming down, as if in answer to the signal of 
the music, of the cloud of the glory of God — a cloud of dusky 
splendor, at once brighter than day and darker than mid- 
night — the very cloud of Sinai, but without its thunders or 
lightnings; the music quaking into silence, and the priests 
throwing themselves on the ground, before the " darkness 
visible" which fills the whole house, lowering over the fore- 
heads of the bulls of brass, and blackening the waves of the 
molten sea ; and the august instant when Solomon, trembling 
yet elate, mounts the brazen scaffold, and standing dim- 
discovered amidst a mist of glory, spreads out his hands, and 
in the audience of the people, utters that prayer so worthy of 
the scene, " But will Grod indeed dwell on the earth ? Behold, 
the heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, 
how much less this house that I have builded !" Surely So- 
lomon here, next to Moses on Sinai, had reached the loftiest 
poijit ever permitted to mortal man. 

But time would fail us even to glance at the numerous 
remaining poetical incidents, circumstances, and passages in 
the historical books. We must omit, reluctantly, the visit of 
the Empress of Sheba to Sultan Solomon — Micaiah's vision of 
Ramoth-Grilead, and of what was to befall Israel and its king 
there — the destruction of Sennacherib and his arni}^, in one 
night, by the angel of the Lord — the great passover of Jo- 
siah — and, besides several incidents, already alluded to as 
occurring in Ezra and Nehemiah, the hi.story of Esther — a 
history s*^ simple, so full of touches of nature and glimpses 
into character, so divine, without any mention of the name 
of God. The most impassioned lover is the secret, who 
never names his mistress. The ocean is not less a worship- 
per that she mutters not her Maker's name. The sun is 
mute in his courts of praise. In Esther, God dwells, as the 
heart in the human frame — not visible, hardly heard, and yet 
thrilling and burning in every artery and vein. No label 
proclaims his presence , but the life of the book has been all 
derived from Him. 



136 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS- 

CHAPTER VII. 

POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 

We have, in the previous chapter, rather outshot the period 
of the Psalms ; but we must throw out a line, and take up 
David, ere we sail further. 

No character has suffered more than that of David, from 
all sorts of imperfect appreciation. While some have treated 
him as a monster of cruelty and lust, classing him with the 
Neros and Domitians, others have invested him with almost 
divine immunities, as if we had no more right to ask at him 
than at God, " What dost thou ?" — as if his motives had been 
irreproachable as those of the wind, and his vengeance inevi- 
table as the thunderbolt. David, in our view of him, was 
neither a monster nor a deity — neither a bad man nor by 
any means the highest of Scripture worthies. William Haz- 
litt has nowhere more disgraced his talents, amid his many 
offences, than in a wretched paper in the " Round Table," 
where he describes David as a crowned spiritual hypocrite, 
passing from debasing sins to debasing services — debauching 
Bathsheba, murdering Uriah, and then going to the top of his 
palace, and singing out his penitence in strains of hollow 
melody. Paine himself, even in his last putrid state, never 
uttered a coarser calumny than this. Nor ever did the pure 
and lofty spirit of Edward Irving look nobler, and speak in 
higher tones, than when, in his preface to " Home on the 
Psalms," he gave a mild, yet stern verdict upon the charac- 
ter of this royal bard — a verdict in which judgment and 
mercy are both found, but with "mercy rejoicing against 
judgment." Many years have elapsed since we read that 
paper, and, should our views, now to be given, happen, as we 
hope, to be found to coincide with it, we must still claim 
them as our own. We remember little more than its tone 
and spirit. 

David was a composite, though not a chaotic, formation. 
At first, we find him as simple and noble a child of Grod, 
nature, and genius, as ever breathed. A shepherd boy, 
watching now the lambs, and now the stars, his sleep is perad- 
venture haunted by dreams of high enterprise and coming 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. j-yj 

glory, but his days are calm and peaceful as those of the boy 
in the Yalley of Humiliation, who carried the herb " heart's 
ease" in his bosom, and sang (next to David's own 23d 
Psalm) the sweetest of all pastorals, closing with the 
lines — 

" Here little, and hereafter bliss, 
Is best from age to age." 

And yet this boy had done, even ere he went to the camp cf 
Israel, one deed of " derring-do ;" he had wet his hands 
in the blood of a lion and bear. This had given him a 
modest sense of his own strength, and perhaps begun to cir- 
culate a secret thrill of ambition throughout his veins ; and 
when he obeyed the command of Jesse to repair to his breth- 
ren in the host, it might be with a foreboding of triumph, 
and a smelling of the battle afar off. We can conceive few 
subjects fitter for picture or poetry, than that of the young 
David measuring the mass of steel — Goliath — with an 
eye which mingled in its ray, wonder, eagerness, anger, 
and 

" That stern joy which warriors feel 
In foemen worthy of their steel." 

A hundred battles looked forth in that lingering, longing, 
insatiate glance. Every one knows the result to the giant 
of Gath : he fell before the smooth sling-stone. The result 
on David's mind is not quite so evident ; but we think that 
all the praises and promotion he received, did not materially 
affect the simplicity of his habits, or the integrity of his pur- 
poses. Nor did, at first, the persecution of Saul much exas- 
perate his spirit, balanced as that was by the love of Jonathan. 
But his long-continued flight and exile — the insecurity of his 
life, the converse he had with " wild men and wild usages " 
in the cave of Adullam and the wilderness of Ziph — although 
they failed in weaning him from his God, or his Jonathan, 
or even Saul — did not fail somewhat to embitter his generous 
nature, and to render him less fitted for bearing the pros- 
perity which suddenly broke upon him. More men are pre- 
pared for sudden death than for sudden success. Even 
after he had reached the throne of his father-in-law, there 
remained long obscure contests with the remnant of Saul's 
party, sudden inroads from the Philistines, and a sullen dead 
resistance on the part of the old heathen inhabitants of the 



138 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 



land, to annoy bis spirit. And when afterwards he had 
brought up the ark of the Lord to the city of David — when 
the Philistines were bridled, the Syrians smitten, the Am- 
monites chastised, and their city on the point of being taken 
— from this very pride of place David fell — fell foully — but 
fell not for ever. From that hour, his life ran on in a cur- 
rent of disaster checkered with splendid successes : it was a 
tract of irregular and ragged glory, tempering at last into a 
troubled yet beautiful sunset. But all the elements for our 
judgment of it had been collected by the time that the " mat- 
ter of Uriah " was fully transacted. 

A noble nature, stung before its sin, and seared before its 
time, contending between the whirlpool of passion and the 
strong still impulses of poetry and faith, ruling all spirits 
except his own^ and yet for ever seeking to regulate it, too, 
sincere in all things — in sin and in repentance — but sincerest 
in repentance — often neglecting the special precept, but ever 
loving the general tenor of the law, unreconciled to his age 
or circumstances, and yet always striving after such a recon- 
ciliation, harassed by early grief, great temptations, terrible 
trials in advanced life, and views necessarily dim and imper- 
fect — David, nevertheless, retained to the last his heart, his 
intellect, his simplicity, his devotion — above all, his sincerity 
— loved his Grod, saw from afar oflf his Redeemer ; and let 
the man who is " without sin," among his detractors, cast the 
first stone His character is clieckercd^ but the stripes out- 
number tht, stains, and the streaks of light outnumber both. 
In his life, there is no lurking-place — all is plain : the heights 
are mountains — " the hills of holiness," where a free spirit 
walks abroad in singing robes ; the valleys are depths, out 
of which you hear the voice of a prostrate penitent pleading 
for mercy, but nothing is, or can be, concealed, since it is 
God's face which shows both the lights and shadows of the 
scene. David, if not the greatest or best of inspired men, 
was certainly one of the most extraordinary. You must try 
him not, indeed, by divine or angelic comparison ; but if 
there be any allowance for the aberrations of a tortured, 
childlike, devout son of genius — if the nobler beasts of the 
wilderness themselves will obey a law, and observe a chrono- 
logy, and follow a path of their own, then let the wanderer 
of Adullam be permitted to enter, or to leave his cave at his 
own time, and in his own way, seeing that his wanderings 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 



139 



were never intended for a map to others, and that those who 
follow are sure to find that they are aught but ways of plea- 
santness or of peace to them. 

David's genius reflects, of course, partially the phases of 
his general character. It is a high, bold energy, combining 
the fire of the warrior and the finer enthusiasm of the lyric 
poet This is its general tone, but it undergoes numerous 
modifications. At one time, it rises into a swell of grandeur, 
in which the strings of his harp shiver, as if a storm were 
the harper. Again, it sinks into a deep, solitary plaint, like 
the cry of the bittern in the lonely pool. At a third time, 
it is a little gush of joy — a mere smile of devout gladness 
transferred to his strain. Again, it is a quick and earnest 
cry for deliverance from present danger. Now, his Psalms 
are fine, general moralizings, and now they involve heart- 
searching self-examinations ; now they are prophecies, and 
now notes of defiance to his enemies ; now pastorals, 
and now bursts of praise. Ere speaking of some of 
them individually, we have a few general remarks to 
ofl"er : — 

First, Few of the Psalms are fancy-pieces, or elaborated 
from the mind of the poet alone : most are founded upon 
facts which have newly occurred, whether those facts be dis- 
tinctly enunciated, or only implied. David is flying from 
Saul, and he strips off a song, as he might a garment, to ex- 
pedite his flight, or he is in the hold in the wilderness, and 
he sings a strain to soothe his anxious soul, or he is overta- 
ken and pressed hard by the Philistines, and he makes mu- 
sical his cry for safety, or he has fallen into a grievous sin, 
and his penitence blossoms into poetry, or he is sitting for- 
lorn in Gath, while the idolaters around are deriding or 
denying the Lord God of Israel, and he murmurs to himself 
the words : " The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God," 
and describes the Lord looking down in anger upon a world 
lying in wickedness. This, which is common to the Psalms, 
with much of the other poetry of Scripture, gives an un- 
speakable freshness, force, and truth to them all. Each_ 
flower stands rooted in truth ; the poetry is jnst fact on fire. 
"We have now what is called " occasional poetry," but the 
occasions thus recorded are generally small, such as the sight 
of the first snow-drop, or the reading of a fine novel in ro- 
mantic circumstances. But suppose a Wallace or a Bruce, 



140 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 



a Mina or a Bolivar, a Wellington or a Napoleon, had been 
writers, and had let off in verse the spray of their adven- 
tures, successes, escapes, and agonies — suppose we had, from 
their own tongues or pens, Wallace's feelings after Falkirk, 
or Napoleon's song of Lodi, or his fugitive poetry during the 
campaign of 1814 — these had borne some resemblance to the 
burning life of David's Psalms. 

Secondly, We find in them great variety, extending not 
only to the Psalms as a whole, but as separate compositions. 
Many of them begin, for instance, with lamentation, and end 
with rapture, whilst others reverse this. In some of the 
shortest, we find all the compass of the gamut described, 
from th^ groan to the paean, from the deep self-accusation to 
the transport of gratitude. Hence a singular completeness 
in them, and an adaptation to the feelings of those mixed 
assemblies which were destined to sing them. " Is any 
merry ? let him sing Psalms ;" but is any melancholy, few of 
those Psalms close without expressing sympathy with his 
desolate feelings too. 

Thirdly, What were the causes of this variety ? It sprang 
partly from the varying moods of David's mind, which was 
singularly sensitive in its feelings, and rapid in its transi- 
tions from feeling to feeling, and from thought to thought — 
his life was, and his poetry is, an April day — and partly be- 
cause, being a prophet, his prophetic insight often comes in 
to shed the bright smile of his future prospects upon the 
darkness of his present state. 

Fourthly, We notice in the Psalms a " more exceeding " 
simplicity and artlessness, than in the rest of even Scrip- 
ture poetry. Any current, though it were of blood or of 
flame, looks less spontaneous than the single spark or blood- 
drop. Many of the prophetic writings have a force, and 
swell, and fierceness, approaching to a certain elaboration ; 
while David's strains distil, like "honey from the rock." 
The swift succession of his moods is childlike. His raptures 
of enthusiasm are as brief as they are lofty. Every thing pro- 
claims a primitive age, a primitive country, and a primitive 
spirit. Such snatches of song, unimpregnated with religion, 
sung the Caledonian bards in their wildernesses, and the 
fairhaired Scalds of Denmark in their galleys. 

Fifthly, The piety of the Psalms is altogether inexpli- 
cable, except on the theory of a peculiar inspiration. The 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. I4I 

touched spirit of David, whether wandering in the desert, or 
seated in his own palace ; whether in defeat or victory ; 
whether in glory or in deep guilt — turns instinctively to 
heaven. Firmly, with his blood-red hand, he grasps the 
Book of the Law of his God ! From old promises, as well 
as fresh revelations, he extracts the hope, and builds up the 
image of a coming Redeemer ! It is beautiful especially to 
see the wanderer of Maon and Engedi, surrounded by the 
lion-faces of his men — the centre of Israel's disaffection, 
distress, and despair — retiring from their company, to pray, 
in the clefts of the rock ; or, sleepless, amid their savage 
sleeping forms, and the wild music of their breathing, sing- 
ing to his own soul those sacred poems, which have been the 
life of devotion in every successive age. It is often, after 
all, to such places, and to such society, that lofty genius, like 
Salvator's, goes, to extract a desert wealth of inspiratioo, 
which is to be found nowhere else. But it is not often that 
such hard-won spoils are carried home and laid on the altar 
of God. 

Sixthly, From all these qualities of the Psalms, arises 
their exquisite adantation to the praising purposes, alike of 
private Christians, of families, and of public assemblies, in 
every age. We are far from denying that other aids to, and 
expressions of, devotion may be legitimately used ; but 
David, after all, has been the chief singer of the Church,, 
and the hold in the wilderness is still its grand orchestra, 1 
Some, indeed, as of old, that are discontented and disgusted 
with life, may have repaired to it, but there, too, you trace 
the footsteps of the widow and fatherless. There the 
stranger, in a strange land, has dried his tears ; and there 
those of the penitent have been loosened in gracious showers. 
There, the child has received an early foretaste of the sweet- 
ness of the green pastures and still waters of piety. There, 
the aged has been taught confidence against life or death, in 
the sure mercies of David ; and there the darkness of the 
depressed spirit has been raised up, and away like a cloud 
on the viewless tongue of the morning wind. But mightier 
spirits, too, have derived strength from those Hebrew me- 
lodies. The soul of the Beformer has vibrated under them 
to its depths ; and the lone hand of a Luther, holding his 
banner before the eyes of Europe, has trembled less that it 
was stretched out to the tune of David's heroic psalms. On 



142 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 

them the freed spirit of the martyr has soared away. And 
have not destruction and death heard their fame, when, on 
the brown heaths of Scotland, the sjtern lay was lifted up, 
by the persecuted, like a new drawn sword, and waved flash- 
ing before the eyes of the foemen — 

"In Judah's land, God is well known, 

His name's in Israel great ; 
In Salem is bis tabernacle, 

In Zion is bis seat. 
Tbere arrows of tbe bow he brake, 

The shield, the sword, tbe war ; 
More glorious thou than bills of prey, 

More excellent art far." 

Wild, holy, tameless strains, how have ye ran down 
through ages, in which large poems, systems, and religions, 
have perished, firing the souls of poets, kissing the lips of 
children, smoothing the pillows of the dying, storming the 
warrior to heroic rage, perfuming the chambers of solitary 
saints, and clasping into one the hearts and voices of thou- 
sands of assembled worshippers ; tinging many a literature, 
and finding a home in many a land ; and still ye seem as 
fresh, and young, and powerful as ever ; yea, preparing for 
even mightier triumphs than when first chanted ! Britain, 
Germany, and America now sing you ; but you must yet 
awaken the dumb millions of China and Japan. 

We select two or three of them for particular survey. 
We have first the 8th Psalm, which if not one of David's 
earliest productions, seems, at least, to reflect faithfully his 
early feelings. The boy's feelings, when crystallized by the 
force of the man's experience, are generally genuine poetry. 
The moods of youth, when clad in the words of manhood, 
and directed to its purposes, become '' apples of gold, set in 
a network of silver." The inspiring thought, in this solemn 
little chant, is that of wonder — the root of all devotion, as 
well as of all poetry and philosophy. " When I consider 
thy heavens, the work of thy fingers — the moon and the 
stars, which thou hast ordained — ^what is man ?" The point 
of view he thus assumes is inexplicable, except on the suppo- 
sition of his entertaining an approximately true notion of 
the magnitude of those starry globes. If they had appeared 
to him only a fow hundred bright spangles on the black robe 
of night, what was there in them so to have dwarfed the 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 1 45 

earth, with its vast expanse and teeming population 1 But 
David's imagination and faith combined to turn his eje into 
a telescope — a glimmer of the true starry scheme came like 
a revelation to his soul ; and, considering at once the magni- 
tude of the heavenly bodies, and their order, beauty, and 
lustre, he cried it, "What is man?" This was his first 
feeling ; but it was breathlessly followed by a perception of 
the exceeding grandeur of man's position in reference to this 
lower world. " Thou hast made him lord over the works of 
thy hands below," although these sovereign heavens seem to 
defy his dominion, and to laugh over his tiny head. It was 
not permitted even to David to foresee the time when man's 
strong hand was to draw that sky nearer, like a curtain — • 
when man was to unfold its laws, to predict its revolutions, 
and to plant the flag of triumph upon its remote pinnacles. 
Since his eye rested, half in despair, upon that ocean of glory, 
and since he drew back from it in shuddering admiration, 
how many bold divers have, from every point of the shore, 
plunged amid its waters, and what spoils brought home — 
here the single pearl of a planet, and here the rich coral of a 
constellation, and here, again, the convoluted shell of a fir- 
mament — besides, what all have tended to give us, the hope 
of fairer treasures, of entire argosies of supersolar spoil, 
till the word of the poet shall become true — 

" Heaven, hast thou secrets 1 
Man unbares me, I have none." 

As a proper pendent to the 8th Psalm, we name next the 
139th. 

Here the poet inverts his gaze, from the blaze of suns, to 
the strange atoms composing his own frame. He stands 
shuddering over the precipice of himself. Above is the All- 
encompassing Spirit, from whom the morning wings cannot 
save ; and below, at a deep distance, appears amid the 
branching forest of his animal frame, so fearfully and won- 
derfully made, the abyss of his spiritual existence, lying like 
a dark lake in the midst. How, between mystery and mys- 
tery, his mind, his wonder, his very reason, seem to rock like 
a little boat between the sea and the sky. But speedily does 
he regain his serenity ; when he throws himself, with child- 
like haste and confidence, into the arms of that Fatherly 
Spirit, and murmurs in his bosom, " How precious also are 



146 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 

thy thoughts unto me, Grod; how great is the sum of 
them ;" and looking up at last in his face, cries — " Search 
me, Lord.. I cannot search thee ; I cannot search myself ; 
I am overwhelmed by those dreadful depths ; but search me 
as thou only canst ; see if there be any wicked way in me, 
and lead me in the way everlasting." 

But hark ! " the voice of the Lord is upon the waters." 
The God of glory thundereth, and it is a powerful voice 
which Cometh forth from the Lord. No marvel that David's 
blood is up, and that you see his hand " pawing," like Job's 
warhorse, for the pen of the lightning. The 29th Psalm sur- 
passes all descriptions of a thunderstorm, including those of 
Lucretius, Virgil, and Byron, admirable as all those are. 
That of Lucretius is a hubbub of matter ; the lightning is a 
mere elemental discharge, not a barbed arrow of vengeance ; 
his system will not permit a powerful personification. Vir- 
gil's picture in the Georgics is superb, but has been some- 
what vulgarized to our feelings by many imitations, and the 
old commonplaces about " Father Jove and his thunderbolts." 
Byron does not give us that overwhelming sense of unity 
which is the poetry of a thunderstorm — cloud answers toi 
cloud, and mountain to mountain; it is a brisk and animated 
controversy in the heavens, but you have not the feeling of'; 
all nature bowing below the presence of one avenging Power, ' 
with difficulty restrained from breaking forth to consume — 
of one voice creating the sounds — of one form hardly con- 
cealed by the darkness — of one hand grasping the livid reins 
of the passing chariot — and of one sigh of relief testifying to 
the feelings of gratitude on the part of nature and of man — 
when, in the dispersion of the storm, the one mysterious , 
power and presence has passed away. It is the godhood of : 
thunder which the Hebrew poet has expressed, and no other , 
poet has. Like repeated peals, the name of the Lord sounds . 
down all the 29th Psalm, solemnizing and harmonizing it all 
— " The voice of the Lord is upon the waters — the God of ,' 
glory thundereth ; the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon ; 
the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh ; the voice of the 
Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests ; ; 
the Lord sitteth upon the flood ; the Lord will give strength > 
unto his people ; the Lord will bless his people with peace." 
Thus are all the phenomena of the storm — from the agitated 
waters of the sea, to the crashing cedars of Lebanon — from 



POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSABMS. 1 47 



the depths of Bashan's forest, bared tc its every fallen leaf, 
and every serpent's hole, in the glare of the lightning, to the 
premature calving of the hind — from the awe of the quaking 
wilderness, to the solemn peace and whispered worship of 
God's people in his temple — bound together by the name and 
presence of God as by a chain of living fire, 

" When science from creation's face, 
Enchantment's veil withdraws, 
What lovely visions yield their place 
To cold material laws." 

True, but not merely lovely but dreadful visions recede be- 
fore the dawn of science ; while the rainbow becomes less 
beautiful, the thunder becomes less sublime. But this poet 
seems not to feel, that, when science reaches its noonday, 
those visions shall return, for, indeed, they are something 
better than mere visions. The thunder, after all, is the 
voice of God. Every particle of that tempest is an instant 
emanation from a present Deity. Analyze electricity as 
strictly as you can, the question recurs, " What is it, whence 
comes it ?" and the answer must be, From an inconceivable, 
illimitable Power behind and within those elements — in one 
word, from God. So that the boy who throws himself down 
in terror before the black cloud, as before a frown, is wiser 
than the man of science, who regards it as he would its pic- 
ture. So that the devout female who cries out, " there's the 
power to crush us, were it but permitted," is nearer the 
truth than the pert prater who, amid the play of those arrows 
of God, takes out his watch to calculate their distance, or 
turns round to prove, according to the doctrine of chances, 
that there is little or no danger. So that the congregation, 
who are awed to silence by this oratory, are the real savants 
of the thunder, which must, like all natural objects, reflect 
the feelings of the human soul ; and the higher that soul, it 
>vill appear the more mysterious ; and the humbler that soul, 
it will appear the more terrible. The ignorant may regard 
it with superstition — the great and good must, with solemn 
reverence. 

The 18th Psalm is called ly Michaelis more artificial, 
and less truly terrible, than the Mosaic odes. In structure, 
it may be so, but surely not in spirit. It appears to many 
besides us, one of the most magnificent lyrical raptures in 



148 - POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 

the Scriptures. As if the poet had dipped his pen in " the 
brightness of that light which was before his eye," so he de- 
scribes the descending God. Perhaps it may be objected 
that the nodus is hardly worthy of the vindex — to deliver 
David from his enemies, could Deity even be imagined to 
come down? But the objector knows not the character of 
the ancient Hebrew mind. That mind was " drunk with 
God." He had not to descend from heaven ; he was nigh — 
a cloud like a man's hand might conceal — a cry, a look might 
bring him down. And why should not David's fancy clothe 
him, as he came, in a panoply befitting his dignity, in clouds 
spangled with coals of fire % If he was to descend, why not 
in state % The proof of the grandeur of this Psalm, is in 
the fact that it has borne the test of almost every transla- 
tion, and made doggrel erect itself, and become divine. Even 
Sternhold and Hopkins, its fiery whirlwind lifts up, purifies, 
touches into true power, and then throws down, helpless, and 
panting upon their ancient common. 

Perhaps the great charm of the 18th Psalm, apart from 
the poetry of the descent, is the exquisite and subtle alterna- 
tion of the I and the Thou. We have spoken of parallelism, 
as the key to the mechanism of Hebrew song. We find this 
as existing between David and God — the delivered, and the 
deliverer — ^beautifully pursued throughout the whole of this 
Psalm. " I will love thee, Lord, my strength." '* I 
will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised." 
" He sent from above ; he took me ; he drew me out 
of many waters." " Thou wilt light my candle." " Thou 
hast given me the shield of thy salvation." " Thou hast 
girded me with strength unto battle." " Thou hast given 
me the necks of mine enemies." " Thou hast made me the 
head of the heathen." The Psalm may thus be likened to a 
stormy dance, where we see David dancing, not now before, 
but by the side of, the Majesty on high. It has been inge- 
niously argued, that the existence of the / suggests, inevi- 
tably as a polar opposite, the thought of the Thou, that the 
personality of man, proves thus the personality of God ; but, 
be this as it may, David's perception of that personality is 
nowhere so intense as here. He seems not only to see, but 
to feel and touch, the object of his gratitude and worship. 

We must not omit the 104th Psalm, although not pro- 
bably from David's pen. It is said by Humboldt to present 



POETRY OP THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 1 49 

a picture of the entire Cosmos; and he adds — ^"We are 
astonished to see, within the compass of a poem of such 
small dimensions, the universe, the heavens, and the earth, 
drawn with a few grand strokes." Its touches are indeed 
few, rapid — but how comprehensive and sublime ! Is it 
God ? — he is " clothed with light as with a garment," and 
when he takes his morning or his evening walk, it is on the 
" wings of the wind." The winds or lightnings ? — they are 
his messengers or angels : " Stop us not," they seem to say, 
" the King's business requireth haste." The waters ? — the 
poet shows them in flood, covering the face of the earth, and 
then as they now lie, inclosed within their embankments, to 
break forth no more for ever. The springs ? — ^he traces them 
by one inspired glance, as they run among the hills, as they 
give drink to the wild and lonely creatures of the wilderness, 
as they nourish the boughs on which sing the birds, the grass 
on which feed the cattle, the herb, the corn, the olive-tree, 
and the vine, which fill the mouth, cheer the heart, and radi- 
ate round the face of man. Then he skims with bold wing 
all lofty objects — the trees of the Lord on Lebanon, " full of 
sap " — the fir-trees and the storks which are upon them — 
the high hills, with their wild goats — and the rocks, with 
their conies. Then he soars up to the heavenly bodies — the 
sun and the moon. Then he spreads abroad his wings in the 
darkness of the night, which " hideth not from him," and 
hears the beasts of the forest creeping abroad to seek their 
prey, and the roar of the lions to (xod for meat, coming up, 
vast and hollow, like embodied sound, upon the winds of 
midnight. Then, as he sees the shades and the wild beasts 
fleeing together, in emulous haste, from the presence of the 
morning sun, and man, strong and calm in its light as in the 
smile of Grod, hieing to his labor, he exclaims, " Lord, how 
manifold are thy works ! in wisdom hast thou made them all !" 
He casts next one look at the ocean — a look glancing at the 
ships which go there, at the leviathan which plays there ; and 
then, piercing down to the innumerable creatures, small and 
great, which are found below its unlifted veil of waters. He 
sees, then, all the beings, peopling alike earth and sea, wait- 
ing for life and food around the table of their Divine Master 
— nor waiting in vain — till lo ! he hides his face, and they 
are troubled, die, and disappear in chaos and night. A gleam, 
next, of the great resurrections of nature and of man comes 



^5o 



POETRY OP THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 



across his eye. " Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are 
created, and thou renewest the face of the earth." But a 
greater truth still succeeds, and forms the climax of the 
Psalm — (a truth Humboldt, with all his admiration of it, 
notices not, and which gives a Christian tone to the whole) — 
" Tlie Lard shall o-ejoice in his works." He contemplates a 
yet more perfect Cosmos. He is " to consume sinners " and 
sin "out of" this fair universe: and then, when man is 
wholly worthy of his dwelling, shall Grod say of both it and 
him, with a yet deeper emphasis than when he said it at first, 
and smiling, at the same time, a yet warmer and softer smile, 
" It is very good." And with an ascription of blessing to 
the Lord does the poet close this almost angelic descant upon 
the works of nature, the glory of Grod, and the prospects of 
man. It is not merely the unity of the Cosmos that he has 
displayed in it, but its progression, as connected with the 
parallel progress of man — its thorough dependence on one 
Infinite Mind — the " increasing purpose " which runs along 
it — and its final purification, when it shall blossom into the 
" bright consummate flower " of the new heavens and the new 
earth " wherein dwelleth righteousness ;" — this is the real 
burden, and the peculiar glory of the 104th Psalm. 

We must not linger longer among those blessed Psalms, 
whether those of David, or those composed in later times, 
else we could have dilated with delight upon the noble 19th, 
where the sun of the world, and the law of God, his soul's 
sun, are bound together in a paneygyric, combining the glow 
of the one and the severe purity of the other ; upon the 22d, 
which some suppose Christ to have chanted entire upon the 
cross ; upon the 24th, describing the entrance of the King of 
Griory into his sanctuary ; upon the Penitential Psalms, com- 
ing to a dreary climax in the 5 1st ; upon such descriptive 
and poetic strains as the 65th ; upon the prophetic power 
and insight of the 72d and the 2d ; and on the searching self- 
communings, and the spirit of gentleness, humility, and love 
of Grod's word, which distinguish the whole of the 119th. 
But, perhaps, finer than all, are those little bursts of irrepres- 
sible praise, which we find at the close. During the course , 
of the book, you had been conducted along very diversified [ 
scenes ; now beside green pastures, now through dark glens, 
now by still waters, now by floods, and now by dismal swamps, 



now through the silent wilderness, where the sun himself was 



POETRY OF THE BCOK OF PSALMS. j^j 

sleeping on his watch-tower — in sympathy with the sterile 
idleness below ; and now through the bustle and blood of 
battlefields, where the elements seemed to become parties in 
the all-absorbing fury of the fray ; but, at last, you stand be- 
side the Psalmists, upon a clear, commanding eminence, 
whence, looking back on the way they had been led, forward 
to the future, and up to their God, now no longer hiding 
himself from his anointed ones, they break into pasans of 
praise : and not satisfied with their own orisons, call on all 
objects, above, around, and below, to join the hymn, become, 
and are worthy of becoming, the organs of a uniyersal devo- 
tion. The last six or seven Psalms are the Beulah of the 
book ; there the sun shineth night and day, and the voice of 
the turtle is heard in the land. From a reflection of their 
fire, have sprung the hymn which Milton ascribes to our first 
parents, the hymn which closes the " Seasons," and the great 
psalm which swelled from the harp of Coleridge, as he struck 
it to the music of the Arveiron, and in the light of the morn- 
ing star. And surely those bright gushes of song, occurring 
at the close, unconsciously typify the time when man, saved 
from all his wanderings, strengthened by his wrestlings, and 
recovered from his falls, shall, clothed in white robes, and 
standing in a regenerated earth, as in a temple, pour out 
floods £>f praise, harmonizing with the old songs of heaven — 
when the nations, as with one voice, shall sing — 

" Praise ye the Lord. God's praise within 

His sanctuary raise ; 
And to him in the firmament * , 

Of his power give ye praise. 
Because of all his mighty acts, 

With praise him magnify : 
praise him as he doth excel 

In glorious majesty. 

Praise him with trumpet's sound ; his praise 

With psaltery advance : 
With timbrel, harp, stringed istruments, 

And organs in the dance. 
Praise him on cymhals loud : him praise 

On cymbals sounding high ; 
Let each thing breathing praise the Lord; 

Praise to the Lord give ye." 



15= 



SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 



CHAPTER YIII. 



SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 



We have already glanced at some of the aspects of this great 
man's character ; but that, both as a man, and as a writer, is 
far too magnificent and peculiar, not to demand a chapter to 
itself 

Magnificence is, indeed, the main quality of Israel's 
" Grand Monarque." as Coleridge calls him. The frequent 
sublimity, and the fluctuating interest, which surrounded his 
father's career, he possessed not. But the springtide of suc- 
cess which was his history, the abundance of his peace, his 
inexhaustible wealth, the pomp of his establishment, the 
splendor of the house and the temple which he built, the 
variety of his gifts and accomplishments, the richness and 
diversified character of his writings, and the manifold hom- 
age paid him by surrounding tribes and monarchs, all pro- 
claimed him " every inch a king," and have rendered '^ Solomon 
and his glory," proverbial to this hour. He sat, too, in the 
centre of a wide-spread commerce, bringing in its yearly 
tribute of wealth to his treasury, and of fame to his. name. 
Even when he sinned, it was with a high hand, on a large 
scale, and with a certain regal gusto ; he did not, like com- 
mon sinners, sip at the cup of corruption, but drank of it, 
" deep and large," emptying it to the dregs. When satiety 
invaded his spirit, that, too, was of a colossal character, and, 
for a season, darkened all objects with the shade of "vanity 
and vexation of spirit." And when he suffered, his groans 
seemed those of a demigod in torment; his head became 
waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears. Thus, on all his 
sides, bright or black, he was equally and roundly great. 
Like a pyramid, the shadow he cast in one direction, was as 
vast as the light he received on the other. 

No monarch in history can be compared, on the whole, 
with Solomon. From the Nebuchadnezzars, the Tamerlanes, 
and similar " thunderbolts of war," he differs in kind, as well 
as in degree. He was the peaceful temple — they were the 
^rmed towers ; his wisdom was greater than his strength — 
they were sceptred barbarians, strong in their military 




1 GAT ME MEN SINGERS, Etc. 



SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 



155 



prowess. In accomplishments, and in the combination of 
good sense with genius, he reminds us of Julius Cesar ; but 
he, too, was a man of war from his youth, besides being 
guilty of crimes both against his country and his own per- 
son,* blacker far than any recorded of the proverbialist of 
Israel ; — a union, let us rather call him, of some of the quali- 
ties of the " good Haroun Alraschid," with some of those of 
our own Alfred the Great. To the oriental grandeur — the 
love of peace, poetry, and pleasure which distinguished the 
caliph — he added the king's sense of justice, and homely, 
practical wisdom. 

It was his first to prove to the world that peace has 
greater triumphs, and richer glories, than war. All the use- 
ful, as well as elegant arts found in him at once a pattern 
and a patron. He collected the floating wisdom of his coun- 
try, after having intermingled it with his own, into compact 
shape. He framed a rude and stuttering science, beautiful, 
doubtless, in its simplicity, when he " spake of all manner of 
trees," from the cedar to the hyssop. He summoned into 
being the power of commerce, and its infant feats were 
mighty, and seemed, in that day, magical. He began to 
bind hostile countries together by the mild tie of barter — a 
lesson which might have been taught him, in the forest of 
Lebanon, by the interchange between the "gold clouds 
metropolitan" above, and the soft valleys of Eden below. 
He built palaces of new and noble architecture ; and al- 
though no pictures adorned the gates of the temple, or shone 
above the altar of incense, or met the eyes of the thousands 
who worshipped within the court of the G-entiles, yet was not 
that temple itself — with its roof of marble and gold, its flights 
of steps, its altars of steaming incense, its cherubic shapes, 
its bulls and molten sea — one picture, painted on the can- 
vas of the city of Jerusalem, with the aid of the hand 
which had painted long before the gallery of the heavens ? 
In poetry, too, he excelled, without being so fllled and 
transported by its power as his father ; and, as with 
David, all his accomplishments and deeds were, during 
the greater part of his life, dedicated to, and accepted by, 
heaven. 

Such is an outline of his eff'orts for the advancement of 



11 * See Suetonius. 



156 SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 

his country. Amidst them all, the feature which most ex- 
alts, and most likens him to Jesus, is the peace of his reign 
It was this which entitled him to build the temple ; it is this 
which casts a certain soft green light, like the light of the 
rainbow, around his glory ; and it is this which directs every 
Christian eye instantly to a " greater than Solomon," in the 
promised peace and blessedness which the 72d Psalm pre- 
dicts as the results of the reign of David's son. The gor- 
geous Solomon, and the humble Jesus, wear one badge — the 
white rose of peace : the one above his crown of gold, and the 
other amid his crown of thorns. 

Every man has a dark period in his career, whether it is 
publicly known or concealed, whether the man outlive or sink 
before it. Solomon, too, had his " hour and power of dark- 
ness." Stern justice forbids us to wink at its principal 
cause. It was luxury aggravated into sin. Fulness of bread, 
security, splendor, wealth, like many suns shining at once 
upon his head, enfeebled and corrupted a noble nature. 
Amid the mazy dances of strange women, he was whirled 
away into the embrace of demon-gods. He polluted the 
simplicity of the service he had himself established. He 
rushed headlong into many a pit, which he had himself 
pointed out, till '-Wisdom" refused to be "justified" of this 
her chosen child. Sorrow trod faithfully and fast in his 
track of sin. Luxury begat listlessness, and this listlessness 
began soon to burn, a still slow fire, about his heart. His 
misery became wonderful, passing the woe of man ; the more, 
as in the obscuration of his great light, enemies, like birds 
obscene and beasts of darkness, began to stir abroad. The 
general opinion of the Church, founded upon the Book of 
Ecclesiastes, is, that he repented and forsook his sins before 
death. Be this true or not, the history of his fall is equally 
instructive. The pinnacle ever overhangs the precipice. 
Any great disproportion between gifts and graces, renders 
the former fatal as a knife is to the suicide, or handwriting 
to the forger. We ardently hope that Solomon became a 
true penitent. But, though he had not, his writings, so far 
from losing their value, would gain new force ; the figure of 
their fallen author would form a striking frontispiece, and 
their solemn warnings would receive an amen, as from the 
caves of perdition. A slain Solomon ! — since fell Lucifer, 
son of the morning, what more impressive proof of the power 



SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 



157 



of evil ? And, like him, tie would seem majestic, though in 
"ruins" — not "less than archangel ruined, and the excess of 
glory obscured." Alas ! is it not still often so in life ? Do 
you not often see beings — whom, for their powers, accom- 
plishments, or charms, you must almost worship — on whom 
the sun looks with fonder and more lingering ray — attract- 
ing, by their fatal beauty, the dark powers, and becoming 
monuments of folly, or miracles of woe ? Is there not what 
we must in our ignorance call a mysterious envy, in the uni- 
verse, which will not allow the beautiful to become the perfect, 
nor the strong the omnipotent, nor the lofty to reach the 
clouds ? That envy (if we dare use the word) is yet unspent^ 
and other mighty shades, hurled down into destruction, may 
be doomed to hear their elder brethren, from Lucifer to By- 
ron, raising the thin shriek of gloomy salutation, " Are ye 
also become weak as we?" as they follow them into their 
cheerless regions. 

With a bound of gladness, we pass from the dark, uncer- 
tain close of Solomon's life, to his works and genius. In 
these he exhibits himself in three aspects — a poetical pro- 
verbialist, a poetical inquirer, and a poetical lover ; the first, 
in his Proverbs — the second, in the Book of E'cclesiastes — 
and the third, in the Song of Songs. But, in all three, 
you see the true soul of a poet — understanding poet in 
that high sense in which the greatest poet is the wisest man. 
David was essentially a lyrical, Solomon is a combination 
of the didactic and descriptive poet. His pictures of folly, 
and his praises of wisdom, prove his didactic ; many scenes 
in the Song, and, besides others, his pictures of old age in 
Ecclesiastes, — his descriptive powers. His fire, compared 
with David's, is calm and glowing — a guarded furnace, not a 
flame tossed by the wind ; his flights are fewer, but they 
are as lofty, and more sustained. With less fire, he has 
more figure ; the colors of his style are often rich as the 
humming-bird's wing, and proclaim, at once, a later age, and 
a more voluptuous fancy. The father has written hymns 
which storm the feelings, melt the heart, rouse the devotion, 
of multitudes ; the son has painted still rich pictures, which 
touch the imaginations of the solitary and the thoughtfuL 
The one, though a great, can hardly be called a wise poet ; 
the other, was the poet sage of Israel — his imagination and 
intellect were equal, and they interpenetrated. 



158 SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 

The Proverbs appear to have been collected by him, with 
many important additions, into their present form. A few 
others were annexed afterwards. They now lie before us, a 
massive collection of sententious truths, around which Sol- 
omon has hung illustrations, consisting of moral paintings, 
and of meditative flights. 

We have first the material, or Proverbs proper. A pro- 
verb may, perhaps, be best defined a common-sense truth, 
condensed in a sentence, and sealed or starred with an 
image. It was certainly a fine conception, that of curdling 
up the common sense of mankind into pleasing and portable 
form — of driving the flocks of loose, wandering thoughts, 
from the wide common into the penfolds of proverbs. Pro- 
verbs have been compared to the flights of oracular birds. 
They tell great general truths. They show the same prin- 
ciples and passions to have operated in every age, and prove 
thus the unity of man. They engrave, unintentionally, an* 
cient manners and customs ; and serve as medals, as well 
as maxims. Like fables, they convey truth to the young 
with all the freshness and the force of fiction. In the com- 
parative richness or meagreness of a nation's proverbs, may 
be read much of its intellect and character ; indeed, Flet- 
cher's saying about the songs of a country, may be trans- 
ferred to its proverbs, they are better than its laws ; nay, 
they are its laws — not the less powerful that they are not 
confined to the statute-books, but wander from tongue to 
tongue and hearth to hearth. The Proverbs proper, in Sol- 
omon's collection, are not only rich in truth, but exceedingly 
characteristic of the Jewish people, and of those early ages. 
The high tendencies of the Hebrew mind — its gravity, its 
austerity, its constant recognition of justice as done now^ its 
identification of evil with error (" Do not they err that de- 
vise evil ?"), of crime with folly, and the perpetual up-rushing 
reference to Deity as a near Presence — are nowhere more 
conspicuous than here. The truth inscribed in them is rarely 
abstract or transcendental — towering up to God, on the one 
hand, in the shape of worship, it is always seeking entrance 
into man, on the other, in the form of practice. Yet pro- 
found as wisdom itself are many of its sentences. " Man's 
goings are of the Lord; how can a man then understand 
his own way ?" " Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten 
in secret is pleasant."' " The spirit of man is the candle of 



SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. I59 

the Lord." " The righteous wisely considereth the house of 
the wicked." '' A merry heart doeth good like a medicine ; 
but a broken spirit drieth the bones." " The desire of the 
slothful killeth him." " Open rebuke is better than secret 
love." Let those who are in the habit of regarding the 
Proverbs as a mass of truisms, ponder such, and many simi- 
lar sentences. We find all that is valuable in Emerson's 
famous essays on " Compensation" and '• Spiritual Laws," 
contained in two or three of those old abrupt sentences, 
which had perhaps floated down from before the flood. The 
imagery in which they are enshrined, has a homely quaint 
richness, and adds an antique setting to these " antient most 
domestic ornaments." 

Around such strong simplicities, rescued from the wreck 
of ages, the genius of Solomon has suspended certain pic- 
tures and meditations, indubitably all his own. Not only 
do they stand out from, and above the rest of the book — not 
only are they too lengthy to have been preserved by tradi- 
tion, but they bear the mark of his munificent and gorgeous 
mind. Some of them are moral sketches, such as those of 
the simple youth, in the 7th chapter — of the strange woman, 
in the 9th — of the drunkard and glutton, in the 23d — and 
of the virtuous woman, in the 21st — sketches reminding 
you, in their fulness, strength, and fidelity, of the master- 
pieces of Hogarth, who had them avowedly in his eye ; others 
are pictures of natural objects, looking in amidst his moral- 
izings as sweetly and refreshingly as roses at the open win- 
dow of a summer school-room. Such we find at the close 
of the 27th chapter — " Be thou diligent to know the state 
of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds. The hay appear- 
eth, and the tender grass showeth itself, and the herbs of the 
mountains are gathered ; the lambs are for thy clothing, and 
the goats are the price (or rent) of the field. And thou 
shalt have goats' milk enough for thy food, for the food of 
thy household, and for the maintenance of thy maidens." 
A third class consists of poetic paeans in praise of wisdom, 
and solemn appeals to those who reject its counsel, and will 
none of i*s reproof The most plaintive of these occurs in 
the first chapter of the book, and forms a striking motto 
upon its opening portals. Scripture contains no words more 
impressive than Wisdom's warning — " Because I called, and 
ye refused, therefore I will laugh at your calamity ; I will 



l6o SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 

mock when your fear cometh — when your destruction Com- 
eth as a whirlwind." The laughter of a God is a tremen- 
dous conception. Suppose the lightning a ghastly smile, 
and the after-thunder a peal of laughter from the sky at 
poor cowering man ; what a new horror would this add to 
the tragedy of the storm, and yet it were but a hieroglyphic 
of the irony implied in Divine derision ! While the giants 
were preparing, with labor dire, and din far heard, to storm 
the skies, the " gods," says Paracelsus, " were calm ; and 
Jove prepared his thunder — all old tales." But, in the hear- 
ing of the Hebrew poet, while the kings of the earth are 
plotting against the Lord and his anointed, a laugh, instead 
of thunder, shakes the heavens, makes the earth to tremble, 
and explodes in a moment the long-laid designs of the ene- 
my, who become frantic more on account of the contemptu- 
ous mode, than the completeness, of the destruction. What 
if the last " Depart, ye cursed !" were to be accompanied by 
celestial laughter, reverberated from the hoarse caverns of 
hell? 

The praise jmd personification of wisdom, reach Solomon's 
highest pitch. To personify an attribute well, is a great 
achievement ; to sustain " strength," or " force," or " beauty," 
through a simile or an apostrophe, is not easy, much less to 
supply a long soliloquy for the lips of Eternal Wisdom. 
Macaulay has coupled Bunyan and Shelley together, as 
masters in the power of glorifying abstractions — of painting 
spiritual conceptions in the colors of life ; nay, spoken of 
them as if they had been the first and greatest in the art. 
He has forgotten Eschylus, and those strong life like forms 
who aid in binding Prometheus to his rock. He has for- 
gotten Solomon's Wisdom, who stands up an " equal amongst 
mightiest energies," and speaks in tones so similar to, that 
he has often been supposed one of, the Great Three. Hear 
the divine egotist — " When he prepared the heavens, / was 
there ; when he appointed the foundations of the earth, J was 
by him, and / was daily his delight : / was set up from ever- 
lasting." As inferior only to Solomon in making metaphors 
move, and flushing the pale cheeks of abstract ideas, we name 
Blake and David Scott. To their eyes, the night of abstrac- 
tion was clearer than the day ; so-called dreams appeared, 
and were realities. They saw the sun standing still ; they 
felt the earth revolving ; to them, every " island " of appear- 



SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. l6l 

ance had fled away, and the mouiitains of conventionalism 
were "no more found." 

We have mentioned the author of the " Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress." Interesting in itself, that work is so also, as one of 
a class of writings of which Ecclesiastes was the first. We 
refer to spiritual autobiographies. We sigh and cry in vain 
for an authentic account of the i'aner life of Shakspeare, or 
Bacon, or Burke ; but we have that (according to general 
belief) of Solomon, that of Bunyan, and that of a modern 
who chooses to entitle himself " Sartor Resartus." It were 
curious, and perhaps something better than curious, to review 
those three earnest histories together. Now, what first 
strikes us about them, is their great similarity. Three pow- 
erful minds, at the distance of ages, in the most diverse 
ranks, circumstances, and states of society, are found, in dif- 
ferent dialects, asking the question — " What shall I do to 
be saved" — struggling in different bogs of the same " Slough 
of Despond" — trying many expedients to be rid of their 
burdens, and at length finding, or fancying they have found, 
a final remedy. It is, then, the mark of man to wear a 
burden : it is the mark of the highest men to bear the 
heaviest burdens, and it is the mark of the brave and bra- 
vest men to struggle most to be free from them. The 
sun of the civilization of the nineteenth century, only shows 
the burden in a broader light, and makes the struggle against 
it more conspicuous, and perhaps more terrible. The preach- 
er from the throne, and the preacher from the tub, utter 
the same message ; in all, the struggle seems made in good 
faith — all are in earnest — all have surrounded their researches 
with a poetic beauty, only inferior to their personal inter- 
est, and all seem to typify large classes of cognate minds. 

Their difficulties, however, assume diversity of form, and 
eliminate diversities of feeling. Solomon's weariness is not 
altogether, though it is in part, that of the jaded sensualist ; 
its root lies deeper. It is the contrast between the grandeur 
of the human mind, and the shortness of human life, the 
meanness of earthly things, and the frailty of the human 
frame, that amazes and perplexes him. The thought of such 
a being, surrounded by such circumstances, inhabiting such 
a house, and dismissed only into the gulf of death, haunts his 
mind like a spectre. That spectre he in vain seeks to reason 
away — to drown, to dissipate, or to moralize away, to outstare 



1 62 SOLOMON AND ffiS POETRY. 

with a hardy look, to bring under any theory, to find any 
path of life where it is not — still it rises before him, embitter- 
ing his food, shadowing his wine-cup, making business a 
drudgery, the reading or making of books a weariness, and 
pleasure a refined torment. Wild, at times, with uncertainty, 
he spurns at the very distinctions between right and wrong, 
knowledge and ignorance, and prays to " God to manifest to 
the sons of men that they are but beasts" (what a text for 
Swift ! nay, are not all his works really sermons on it ?) ; 
but, with the spectre reflected on tJiem^ those great barriers 
arise again, and he confesses, that " Wisdom excelleth folly, as 
far as light excelleth darkness " Death, being to him but faintly 
gilded with immortality, presents little prospect of relief. 
And thus does the wise, wealthy, and gifted king toss to and 
fro, on his couch of golden fire, and the Book of Ecclesiastes 
is simply a record of the uneasy motions, and helpless cries, 
of a mind as vacant as vast, seeking to be filled, and awaken- 
ing an echo only of the horse-leech's cry, " Grive, give." 

In Bunyan, the difficulty is rather moral than intellectual. 
His spirit is bowed under a sense of sin, and of its infinite 
endless consequences. He is humble, as if all hell were 
bound up in the burden on his back. " How shall I be happy 
on earth ?" is Solomon's question ; " How shall I cease to be 
unhappy here and hereafter ?" is Bunyan's. Both feel them- 
selves miserable ; but to Bunyan's mind, his misery seems 
more the result of personal guilt, than of the necessary li- 
mitations of human life, and of the human understand- 
ing. 

In Sartor we have great doubt and darkness expressed in 
the language of the present day. But it is not so much his 
personal imperfection, or the contrast between the capacities 
of his soul and the vanity and shortness of hia life, which 
aftects him, as it is the uncertainty of his religious creed. 
Devoured by the religious element, as by central fire, the 
faith of his fathers supplies, he thinks, no adequate fuel. 
Unable to believe it fully, he is incapable of hating or strik- 
ing at its roots ; he deems that rottenness has withered it ; 
but is it not still the old elm-tree under which, in childhood, he 
sported, mused, and prayed ? No other shelter or sanctuary 
or shelter can he find. And then, in wild, fierce, yet self-col- 
lected wanderings, " Gehenna buckled under his calm belt," 
he walks astray, over the wilderness of this world, seeking, 



SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 163 

above all things, after rest ; or that he should awake, and find 
his pilgrimage, indeed, to be a dream ! 

Thus pass on the three notable pilgrims — the crowned 
Solomon, the bush-lipped and fiery-eyed Baptist, and the 
strong literary Titan of this age — each, for a season, carrying 
his hand, like the victims in Vathek, upon his breast, and 
saying, " It burns." All attain, at last, a certain peace and 
satisfaction. The conclusion of Solomon's whole matter is, 
" Fear Grod, and keep his commandments, for this is the 
whole duty of man." " Here is one solid spot amid an 
ocean of vexation, of uncertainty, of contradiction, and of 
vanity, and on it I will rest my weary foot." Bunyan, a poor 
burdened sinner, clings to the cross, and it is straightway 
surrounded by the shining ones, who come from heaven to 
heal and comfort the sufferer. Sartor says, " I am not meant 
for pleasure ; I despise it ; happiness is not meant for me, 
nor for man ; but I may be blessed in my misery and dark- 
ness, and this is far better." All those results seem beau- 
tiful, in the light of the tears and the tortures through which 
they have been reached. All are sincere and strong-felt. 
But, while the' last is vague an'd unsupported as a wandering 
leaf, while the first is imperfect as the age in which it was 
uttered, the second is secure in its humility, strong in its 
weakness, has ministered, and is ministering, comfort, peace, 
and hope — how living and life-giving to thousands ! — and if 
it fail — 

" The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
And earth's base built on stubble," 

"We leave the machinery, the meaning and the manners of 
Solomon's Song, to Charles Taylor, Pye Smith, and other 
critics ; we have a sentence to say as to its spirit and poetry. 
It is conceived throughout in a vein of soft and tender feeling, 
and suffused with a rich, slumbrous light, like that of a July 
afternoon, trembling amid beds of roses. There are fiowers. 
but they are not stirred, but fanned by the winds of passion. 
The winds of passion themselves are asleep to their own 
music. The figures of speech are love-sick. The dialogues 
seem carried on in whispers. Over all the scenery, from the 
orchards of pomegranates, the trees of frankincense, and the 
fountains of the gardens, to the lions' dens, and the moun- 
tains of the leopards, there rests a languor, like sunny mist, 



j64 SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 

and shines " the bloom of young desire, and purple light of 
love." To call all this the effect of an oriental climate and 
genius, is incorrect ; for, first, all the writings in Scripture 
were by orientals ; and, secondly, we find certain occidental 
poems, such as " Komeo and Juliet," or " Lalla Rookh," 
nearly as rich as the Song. We must either trace it to some 
sudden impulse given to the imagination of Solomon, whe- 
ther by spring coming before her time — or appearing in more 
than her wonted beauty — or flushing over the earth with 
more than her wonted spirit-like speed — or by the access of 
a new passion, which, even in advanced life, makes all things, 
from the winter in the blood to the face of nature, new and 
fresh, as if after a shower of sunny rain ; or we may trace 
it, with the general voice of the church, to the influence of 
new views of the loveliness of Messiah's character and of 
his future church, around whom, as if hastily to pay the 
first-fruits of the earth's homage to her lord and his bride, 
cluster in here all natural beauties, at once reflecting their 
image and multiplying their splendors. Solomon might 
have had in his eye a similar vision to that afterwards seen 
by John of the bride, the Lamb's wife, coming down from 
God out of heaven ; and surely John himself never described 
his vision under sweeter, although he has with sublimer, 
images. " I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the val- 
leys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the 
daughters." " Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, 
fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army 
with banners ?" 

We notice in this poem two classes of descriptions — the 
one of persons, the other of natural scenes — and a singular 
contrast between them. Solomon's description of persons 
is, in general, gorgeous to exuberance. Images, from ar- 
tificial and from natural objects, are collected, till the bride 
or bridegroom is decked with as many ornaments as a sum- 
mer's landscape or a winter's night sky ; the raven's plumage 
is plucked from his wing, the dove's eye is extracted from 
its socket, perfumes are brought from beds of spices, and 
lilies led drooping out of their low valleys — nay, the vast 
Lebanon is himself ransacked to garnish and glorify the one 
dear image ; on the other hand, the description of natural 
scenes is simple in the extreme, yet beautiful as if nature 
were describing herself. " The winter is past, the rain is 



SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 



'65 



over and gone ; the flowers appear on the earth ; the time of 
the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is 
heard in our land." This is the green of nature looking in 
amid the glare of passion. We have here love first exagge- 
rating the object beloved, and then retiring to hide her 
blushes of shame amidst the cool leaves of the garden. 

We find, in Shakspeare, a similar intermixture of natural 
objects with passionate scenes, and a similar subdued tone in 
their description. It is not that he does this for the sake 
of efi'ect, nor that he quails — he merely cools — before nature. 
The natural allusions act like the touch of female aflFection, 
laid on the red brow of passion, and opening the fountain of 
tears. His madmen, like poor Lear, are crowned with flowers ; 
his castles of gloom and murder are skimmed by swallows, 
and swaddled in delicate air ; in his loneliest ruins lurk wild 
grasses and flowers, and around them the lightning itself be- 
comes a crown of glory. 

Regarding the question as to the Christian application of 
the Song, as still a moot, and as a non-essential point, we 
forbear to express an opinion on it. As a love dialogue, 
colored to the proper degree with a sensuous flush, " beauti- 
ful exceedingly" in its poetry, and portraying with elegance, 
ancient customs, and the inextinguishable principles of the 
human heart, this poem is set unalterably in its own niche. 
It has had many commentaries, but, in our judgment, the 
only writer who has caught its warm and glowing spirit, is 
Samuel Rutherford, who has not, indeed, written a commen- 
tary upon it, but whose " Letters" are inspired by its influ- 
ence, and have nearly reproduced all its language. Despite 
the extravagances with which they abound, when we consider 
the heavenliness of their spirit, the richness of their fancy, 
the daring, yet devout tone of their language, the wrestling 
earnestness of their exercise, their aspirings after the Saviour, 
in whom the writer's soul often sees '• seven heavens," and to 
gain whom, he would burst through " ten hells" — we say, 
blessings and perfumes on the memory of those dungeons 
whence so many of these letters came, and on that of their 
rapt seraphic author whose chains have been " glorious liberty 
to many a son of God." The soul was strong which could 
spring heaven-high un4er his prison load, and which has made 
the cells of his supposed infamy holy and haunted ground, 
both to the lovers of liberty and the worshippers of God. 



1 66 INTIIODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS. 

It is with a certain melancholy that we dismiss the great 
monarch of Israel. We remember once feeling a strong 
shudder of horror at hearing an insinuation (we believe not 
true) that the author of a very popular and awful religious 
poem, was not himself a pious man. It was one of those 
assertions which make the heart quake, and the hand catch 
convulsively at the nearest object, as if earth were sinking 
below us. But the thought of the writer of a portion of the 
Bible being a " cast-away'' — a thought entertained by some 
of repute in the Christian world — is far more painful. It 
may not, as we have seen, detract from, but rather add to, 
the effect of his writings ; but does it not surround them 
with a black margin ? Does not every sentence of solemn 
wisdom they contain, seem clothed in mourning for the 
fate of its parent ? On Solomon's fate, we dare pronounce no 
judgment ; but, even granting his final happiness, it is no 
pleasing task to record the mistakes, the sins, the sorrows, 
nor even the repentance of a being originally so noble. If 
at " evening time it was light" with him, yet did not a 
scorching splendor torment the noon, and did not thunders, 
melting into heavy showers, obscure the after day ? The 
" glory of Solomon" is a troubled and fearful glory : how 
different from the meek light of the life of Isaac — most 
blameless of patriarchs — whose history is that of a quiet, 
gray autumnal day, where, with no sun visible, all above and 
below seem diluted sunshine — a day as dear as it is beauti- 
ful, and which dies regretted, as it has lived enjoyed ! 



CHAPTER IX. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS. 

We resign to other writers — many of whom are so well com- 
petent for it — the task of disproving the theory that the 
prophets were the mere rhythmic historians of past events-^ 
merely the bards of their country. Indeed, one of the 
shrewdest of German critics, De Wette, abandons this as 
untenable, and concedes them a certain foresight of the 
future, although he evidently concedes it to be little better 
than the instinct of cats forecasting rain, or of vultures scent- 




SHE IMADE HASTE TO FLEE. 



DJTRODUCTION TO TirE PROPHETIC BOOKS. 1 69 

ing carrion. We propose at present to make a few remarks 
illustrative of the prophetic office among the Hebrews. The 
general picture of a prophet has been given already. 

The prophet, first, had a supernatural gift. That this 
was more than genius, is evident from the terms applied to 
it ; the power moving them is always a m(yral power ; it is 
the " Holy''' Ghost — it is a divine power — " the Spirit of the 
Lord is upon them" — from the purposes served by their ut- 
terances, which are uniformly, not merely artistic, but moral 
and spiritual — from the objects presented to their view, often 
lying hid in regions which the most eagle-eyed genius were 
unable to scan — and from the miraculous circumstances by 
which so many of their messages were sealed. That this 
supernatural power did not interrupt, though it elevated, 
their natural faculties, is evident from the diversities of style 
and manner which are found not only among different pro- 
phets, but in different parts of the same prophecy. This 
gift, again, operated on the prophets in divers manners. 
Sometimes God visited their minds by silent suggestion ; 
sometimes he spoke to them as he did to Samuel, by a voice ; 
sometimes the prophet fell into a trance or day-dream, and 
sometimes God instructed him through a vision of the night ; 
sometimes angelic agency was interposed as a medium, and 
sometimes God directly dawned upon the soul ; sometimes 
future events were distinctly predicted ; sometimes they were 
adumbrated in figure ; and sometimes counsel, admonition, 
and warning, constituted the entire " burden." Language, 
often creaking under the load, was the general vehicle for the 
prophetic message, but frequently, too, " signs" and " won- 
ders" of the most singular description were employed to sha- 
dow and to sanction it. The prophet, who at one time only 
smote with his hand, stamped with his foot, or cried with his 
voice, at another prepared stuff for removing, or besieged a 
tile, or married " a wife of whoredoms," to symbolize the 
mode, and attest the certainty, of approaching events. Bolder 
upon occasion still, he dared to stretch forth his hand to the 
wheel of nature, and it stopped at its touch — to call for fire 
from heaven, and it came when he called for it. 

The power of prophecy was fitful and intermitting : in 
this point, resembling genius. It was, like it, 

" A power which comes and goes like dream, 
And which none can ever trace," 
12 



lyo INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS. 

In the fine language of Husliai. it lighted upon the prophet 
as the " dew falleth upon the ground." Rather, it came 
upon his head, and stirred his hair, and kindled his eye, and 
inflated his breast, as a gust of wind comes upon a pine, for, 
though sudden, its advent was not soft as the dew. It was 
a nobler demoniac possession. Recovered from it, the pro- 
phet resumed his ordinary occupation, and was a common 
man once more. Then, too, his own words seemed strange 
to him ; he wondered at them, as we can conceive the fabled 
oak wondering when it had sweltered honey. He searched 
what the Spirit did signify by him, nor probably was he always 
successful in the search. Authors of mere human gift are often 
surprised at their own utterances. Even while understanding 
their general meaning, there are certain shades, certain em- 
phases, a prominence given by the spirit of the hour to some 
thoughts and words, which seem to them unaccountable, as to 
a dreamer his converse, or his singing, when reviewed by the 
light of day. How much more must the prophet, through 
whom passed the mighty rushing wind of the Divinity, have 
stared and trembled as he recalled the particulars of the 
passage. 

Nor was this transit of God, over the prophetic soul, 
silent as that of a planet. It was attended by great bodily 
excitement and agony. The prophets were full of the fury of 
the Lord. The Pythoness, panting upon her stool — Eschy- 
lus, chased before his inspiration, as before his own Furies — 
Michael Angelo, hewing at his Moses, till he was surrounded 
by a spray of stone — the Ancient Marinere, wrenched in the 
anguish of the delivery of his tale — ^give us some notion of 
the Hebrew prophet, with the burden of the Lord upon his 
heart and his eye. Strong and hardy men, they generally 
were ; but the wind which crossed them, was a wind which 
could " rend rocks," and waft tongues of fire upon its wings. 
In apprehension of its efi'ects, on both body and spirit, we 
find more than one of their number shrinking from below its 
power. It passed over them, notwithstanding, and, perhaps, 
an under-current of strength was stirred within, to sustain 
them in that " celestial colloquy sublime." But true inspira- 
tion does no injury, and has no drawback. Nectar has no dregs. 

The prophet, thus excited and inspired, was certain to 
deliver himself in figurative language. All high and great 
thought, as we tiave intimated before, casts metaphor from 



INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS. 



171 



it, as surely as substance produces shadow. The thought of 
the Hebrew bard had come from heaven, and must incarnate 
itself in earthly similitudes, or remain unuttered. Figure, 
in some cases a luxury, was here a necessity of speech. As 
this thought, besides, was destined to be coeval with earth, it 
must be expressed in that universal cipher which the lan- 
guage of figure alone supplies. It, like sunlight, always 
explains and recommends itself to every one who has eyes 
to see. A figure on the breast of a truth, is like a flower in 
the hand of a friend. Hence, its language, like the language 
of flowers, is free of the world and of all its ages. It is 
fine to see the genius of poetry stooping to do the tasks of 
the prophetic power. Herself a " daughter of the king," 
she is willing to be the handmaid of her elder sister. In- 
stead of an original, she is content to be the mere trans- 
lator, into her own everlasting vernacular, of the oracles of 
heaven. 

This singular form — its soul the truth of heaven — its body 
the beauty of earth — was attached, for wisest purposes, to 
the Jewish economy. It acted as God's spur, suspended by 
the side of the system, as it moved slowly forward. It gave 
life to many dead services ; it mingled a nobler element with 
the blood of bulls and goats ; it disturbed the dull tide of 
national degeneracy ; it stirred, again and again, the old 
flames of Sinai ; it re-wrote, in startling characters, the pre- 
cepts of the moral law ; and, in its perpetual and vivid pre- 
dictions of Messiah's coming, and death, and reign, outshot 
by ages the testimony of types, rites, and ceremonies. It 
did for the law what preaching has done for the Gospel ; it 
supplied a living sanction, a running comment, and a quick- 
ening influence. When, at times, its voice ceased, the cessa- 
tion was mourned as a national loss ; and we hear one of 
Israel's later psalmists complaining that " there is not among 
us a prophet more." And this not that Asaph lamented 
that there was none to sing the great deeds of his country, 
but that he mourned the decay of the piety and insight of 
which prophecy had been the " bright consummate flower." 
In truth, prophecy represented in itself the devotion, the 
insight, and the genius of the land, and of the period when 
it was poured forth. 

This power was subjected to a certain culture. Schools 
of the prophets seem to have been first established by Samuel 



172 INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS. 



The pupils were trained up in a knowledge of religion, and 
in habits of devotion. These schools were nurseries, and 
from them God might, and did, choose, from time to time, 
his appointed instruments. Amos seems (vii. 14.) to regard 
it as a thing uncommon, that though he was a prophet, he 
had not been trained iu'Such seminaries. It is supposed by 
some, that those sons of the prophets were employed as their 
assistants, and stood in the relation which evangelists after- 
wards bore to the apostles. 

Lastly, This prophetic vision, centring in Christ, be- 
came clearer as he drew near. At first it is dim ; the charac- 
ter of the person is but partially disclosed ; his divinity 
glimmers faintly on the view, and a cloud of darkness rests 
on his predestined suflferings — on that perilous " bruising," 
by which he was to send forth judgment unto victory. Gradu- 
ally, however, it brightens ; the particulars of his mystic 
agony begin to flash on the view of the prophets, while, at the 
same time, his drv4ne dignity is becoming luminously visible, 
and while the prospect of the triumphs, consequent on his 
death, is stirring their hearts to rapture ; and, finally, the 
very date of the hour and power of darkness is recorded, the 
place of his birth is disclosed, and his coming to his father's 
temple is announced in thunder. Thus did the " spirit of 
prophecy" bear a growing testimony to Jesus. Thus did 
the long line of the prophets, like the stars of morning, shine 
more and more, till they yielded and melted in the Sun of 
Righteousness. And through this deepening and enlarging 
vision it was that the Jewish imagination, and the Jewish 
heart, were prepared for his coming. The prophets, kings 
though they were, over their own economy, were quite ready 
to surrender their sceptres to a greater than they. Would 
that the sovereigns, statesmen, poets, and philosophers of 
the present age were equally ready to cast their crowns at 
the feet of that expected One, " who shall come, will come, 
and will not tarry." 



ISAIAH. 



175 



CHAPTER X. 

ISAIAH, JEREMIAH, EZEKIEL, DANIEL. 
ISAIAH. 

" T FELT," says Sir W. Herschel, " after a considerable sweep 
tlirough the sky with my telescope, Sirius announcing him- 
self from a great distance ; and at length he rushed into the 
field of view with all the brightness of the rising sun, and I 
had to withdraw my eyes from the dazzling object." So 
have we, looking out from our '• specular tower," seen from a 
great way off the approach of the '• mighty orb of song " — the 
divine Isaiah — and have felt awestruck in the path of his 
coming. He was a prince amid a generation of princes — a 
Titan among a tribe of Titans ; and of all the prophets who 
rose on aspiring pinion to meet the Sun of Righteousness, it 
was his — the Evangelical Eagle — to mount highest, and to 
catch on his wing the richest anticipation of his rising. It 
was his, too, to pierce most clearly down into the abyss of 
the future, and become an eye-witness of the great events 
which were in its womb inclosed. He is the most eloquent, 
the most dramatic, the most poetic — in one word, the most 
complete, of the Bards of Israel. He has not the bearded 
majesty of Moses — the gorgeous natural description of Job — 
Ezekiel's rough and rapid vehemence, like a red torrent from 
the hills seeking the lake of Galilee in the day of storm — 
David's high gusts of lyric enthusiasm, dying away into the 
low wailings of penitential sorrow — Daniel's awful allegory — ■ 
John's piled and enthroned thunders ; his power is solemn, 
sustained — at once measured and powerful ; his step moves 
gracefully, at the same time that it shakes the wilderness. 
His imagery, it is curious to notice, amidst all its profusion, 
is seldom snatched from the upper regions of the Ethereal — 
from the terrible crystal, or the stones of fire — from the winged 
cherubim, or the eyed wheels — from the waves of the glassy sea, 
or the blanched locks of the Ancient of Days ; but from lower, 
though lofty objects — from the glory of Lebanon, the excel- 
lency of Sharon, the waving forests of Carmel, the willows of 
Kedron, the flocks of Kedar, and the rams of Nebaioth. 



176 ISAIAH. 



Once only does he pass within the vail — " in the year that 
King Uzziah died " — and he enters trembling, and he with- 
draws in haste, and he bears out from amidst the surging 
smoke and the tempestuous glory, but a single " live coal " 
from off the altar. His prophecy opens with a sublime com- 
plaint ; it frequently irritates into noble anger, it subdues 
into irony, it melts into pathos ; but its general tone is that 
of victorious exultation. It is one long rapture. You see 
its author standing on an eminence, bending forward over 
the magnificent prospect it commands, and, with clasped 
hands, and streaming eyes, and eloquent sobs, indicating his 
excess of joy. It is true of all the prophets, that they fre- 
quently seem to see rather than foresee, but especially true of 
Isaiah. Not merely does his mind overleap ages, and take up 
centuries as a •' little thing ;" but his eye overleaps them too, and 
seems literally to see the word Cyrus inscribed on his banner — 
the river Euphrates turned aside — the cross, and him who bare 
it. We have little doubt that many of his visions became 
objective, and actually painted themselves on the prophet's 
eye. Would we had witnessed that awful eye, as it was 
piercing the depths of time — seeing the To Be glaring 
through the thin mist of the Then ! 

How rapid are this prophet's transitions ! how sudden his 
bursts ! how startling his questions ! how the page appears 
to live and move as you read ! " Who are these that fly as a 
cloud, and as the doves to their windows?" "Who is this 
that Cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah?" 
" Who hath believed our report ?" " Lift ye up a banner 
upon the high mountain !" '• Awake, awake, put on thy 
strength, O Zion ; put on thy beautiful garments, Jeru- 
salem !" " Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
waters !" He is the divine describer of a divine panorama. 
His sermons are not compositions, but cries, from one who 
" sees a sight you cannot see, and hears a voice you cannot 
hear." He realizes the old name which gradually merged in 
that of prophet — "seer." He is the seer — an eye running 
to and fro throughout the future: and as you contemplate 
him, you feel what a power was that sight of the olden 
prophets, which pierced the thickest veils, found the turf 
thin and the tombstone transparent, saw into the darkness 
of the past, the present, and the to come — the most hidden re- 
cesses of the human heart — the folds of Destruction itself; 



ISAIAH. 



177 



that sight which, in Ezekiel, bare the blaze of the crystal 
and the eyes of the wheels — which, in Daniel, read at a 
glance the hieroglyphics of heaven — and which, in John, 
blenched not before the great white throne. Many eyes are 
glorious: that of beauty, with its mirthful or melancholy 
meaning ; that of the poet, rolling in its fine frenzy ; that 
of the sage, worn with wonder, or luminous with mild and 
settled intelligence ; but who shall describe the eye of the 
prophet, across whose mirror swept the shadows of empires, 
stalked the ghosts of kings, stretched in their loveliness the 
landscapes of a regenerated earth, and lay, in its terror, red 
and still, the image of the judgment-seat of Almighty God 1 
Then did not sight — the highest faculty of matter or mind — 
come culminating to an intense and dazzling point, trembling 
upon Omniscience itself ? 

Exultation, we have said, is the pervading spirit of Isaiah's 
prophecy. His are the " prancings of a mighty one." Has 
he to tread upon idols? — he not only treads, but tramples 
and leaps upon them. Witness the irony directed against 
the stock and stone gods of his country, in the 44th chapter. 
Does he describe the downfall of the Assyrian monarch ? — 
it is to the accompaniment of wild and hollow laughter from 
the depths of Hades, which is "moved from beneath" to 
meet and welcome his coming. Grreat is his glorying over 
the ruin of Babylon. With a trumpet voice he inveighs 
against the false fastings and other superstitions of his age. 
As the panorama of the millennial day breaks in again and 
again upon his eye, he hails it with an unvaried note of tri- 
umphant anticipation. Rarely does he mitigate his voice, or 
check his exuberant joy, save in describing the sufferings of 
Christ. Here he shades his eyes, holds in his eloquent breath, 
and furls his wing of fire. But, so soon as he has* passed the 
hill of sorrow, his old rapturous emotions come upon him 
with twofold force, and no pa?an, in his prophecy, is more 
joyous than the 54th chapter. It rings like a marriage bell. 

The true title, indeed, of Isaiah's prophecy is a " song." 
It is the " Song of Songs, which is Isaiah's," and many of 
its notes are only a little lower than those which saluted the 
birth of Christ, or welcomed him from the tomb, with the 
burden, " He is risen, he is risen, and shall die no more !" 

From this height of vision, pitch of power, and fulness 



lyS ISAIAH. 



of utterance, Isaiah rarely stoops to the tender. He must 
sail on in 

" Supreme dominion, 
Through the azui-e deep of air." 

Yet, when he does descend, it is gracefully. " Can a woman 
forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion 
on the son of her womb ? Yea, they may forget ; yet I will 
not forget thee." Tears in the eye of a strong man, move 
more than all other human tears. But here are tears from 
a '• fire-armed angel," and surely there is no softness like 
theirs. 

The uniform grandeur, the pomp of diction, the almost 
painful richness of figure, distinguishing this prophet, would 
have lessened his power over the common Christian mind, 
had it not been for the evangelical sentiment in which his 
strains abound, and which has g-ained him the name of " the 
Fifth Evangelist." Many bear with Milton solely for his 
religion. It is the same with Isaiah. The cross stands in 
the painted window of his style. His stateliest figure bows 
before Messiah's throne. An eagle of the sun, his nest is in 
Calvary. Anticipating the homage of the Eastern sages, he 
spreads out before the infant God treasures of gold, frank- 
incense, and myrrh. The gifts are rare and costly, but not 
too precious to be offered to such a being; they are brought 
from afar, but he has come farther " to seek and to save that 
which was lost." 

Tradition — whether truly or not, we cannot decide — as- 
serts that 698 years before Christ, Isaiah was sawn asunder. 
Cruel close to such a career ! Harsh reply this sawing 
asunder, to all those sweet and noble minstrelsies. German 
critics have recently sought to imitate the operation^ to cut 
our present Isaiah into two. To halve a body is easy ; it is 
not quite so easy to divide a soul and spirit in sunder. Isaiah 
himself spurns such an attempt. The same mind is manifest 
in all parts of the prophecy. Two suns in one sky were as 
credible as two such flaming phenomena as Isaiah. No ! it 
is one voice which cries out at the beginning, " Hear, 
heavens, and give ear, earth" — and which closes the book 
with the promise, " And it shall come to pass, that from one 
new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall 
all flesh come and worship before me, saith the Lord." 



JEREMIAH. l8l 



JEREMIAH. 

Criticism is never so unjust, as when, while exaggerating 
one undoubted merit in a writer, she denies him every other. 
This is unjust, because a great merit is seldom found alone — 
there has seldom, for example, been a great imagination with- 
out a great intellect ; and because it is envy which allows the 
prominence of one faculty to conceal others which are only 
a little less conspicuous. Burke was long counted, by many, 
a fanciful showy writer without judgment : although it is 
now universally granted that his understanding was more 
than equal to his fancy. It was once fashionable to praise 
the prodigality of Chalmers' imagination at the expense of 
his intellect; it seems now admitted, that although his ima- 
gination was not prodigal, but vivid — nor his intellect subtle, 
though strong — that both were commensurate. A similar 
fate has befallen Jeremiah. Because he was plaintive, other 
qualities have been denied, or grudgingly conceded him. 
The tears which often blinded him, have blinded his critics 
also. 

The first quality exhibited in Jeremiah's character and 
history, is shrinking timidity. His first words are, " Ah, 
Lord God, behold I cannot speak, for I am a child." The 
storm of inspiration had seized on a sensitive plant or quiv- 
ering aspen, instead of an oak or a pine. Jeremiah, at this 
crisis, reminds us of Hamlet, in the greatness of his task, 
and the indecision or feebleness of his temperament. And 
yet this very weakness serves at length to attest the truth 
and power of the afflatus. Jeremiah, with a less pronounced 
personality than his brethren, supplies a better image of an 
instrument in God's hand, of one moved, tuned, taught, from 
behind and above. Strong in supernal strength, the child 
is made a '• fenced city, an iron pillar, and a brazen wall," 
Traces, indeed, of his original feebleness and reluctance to 
undertake stern duties, are found scattered throughout his 
prophecy. We find him, for instance, renewing the curse of 
Job against the day of his birth. "We find him, in the 
same chapter, complaining of the derision to which he was 
subjected in the discharge of his mission. But he is re-as- 
sured, by remembering that the Lord is with him, as a 
" mighty terrible one." His chief power, besides pathos, is 



1 82 JEREMIAH. 



impassioned exhortation. His prophecy is one long applica- 
tion. He is distinguished by powerful and searching prac- 
ticalness. He is urgent, vehement, to agony. His "heart is 
broken" within him ; his " bones shake ;" he is " like a 
drunken man," because of the Lord, and the words of his 
holiness. This fury often singles out the ignorant pretenders 
to the prophetic gift, who abounded in the decay and degra- 
dation of Judah. Like an eagle plucking from the jackdaw 
his own shed plumes, does Jeremiah lay about him in his 
righteous rage. Their dull dreams he tears in pieces, for 
" what is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord." For their 
feigned burdens he substitutes a weight of wrath and con- 
tempt, under which they sink into ignominy. Mingled with 
this ardor of spirit, and earnestness of appeal, there are 
touches of poetic grandeur. Witness the picture in the 4th 
chapter of the tokens attesting the forthcoming of the Lord 
to vengeance. Chaos comes again over the earth. Darkness 
covers the heaven. The everlasting mountains tremble. 
Man disappears from below, and the birds fly from the dark- 
ened air. Cities become ruins, and the fruitful places wilder- 
nesses, before the advancing anger of the Lord. Byron's 
darkness is a faint copy of this picture ; it is an inventory of 
horrible circumstances, which seem to have been laboriously 
culled and painfully massed up. Jeremiah performs his 
task with two or three strokes ; but they are strokes of 
lightning. 

Before closing his prophecy, this prophet must mount a 
lofty peak, whence the lands of God's fury, the neighboring 
idolatrous countries, are commanded, and pour out lava 
streams of invective upon their inhabitants. And it is a 
true martial fire which inspirits his descriptions of carnage 
and desolation. In his own language, he is a " lion from the 
swellings of Jordan, coming up against the habitation of the 
strong." All tears are now wiped from his face. There is 
a fury in his eye which makes you wonder if aught else were 
ever there ; it is mildness maddened into a holy and a fear- 
ful frenzy. In a noble rage, he strips off the bushy locks of 
Graza, dashes down the proud vessel of Moab, consumes Am- 
mon, makes Esau bare, breaks the bow of Elam, and brand- 
ishes again, and again, and again, a sword over Babylon, 
crying out at each new blow, " a sword is upon the Chal- 
deans; a sword is upon the liars; a sword is upon her 



JEREMIAH. 



183 



mighty men ; a sword is upon her horses ; a sword is upon 
her treasures." "We have difficulty in recognizing the weeper 
among the willows in this homicidal Energy, all whose tears 
have been turned into devouring fire. 

Besides his Lamentations — which have occasioned the 
general mistake that he is wholly an elegiac poet — fine 
strokes of pathos are scattered amidst the urgency, the bold- 
ness, and the splendor of his prophecy. His is that melting 
figure of Rachel, weeping for her children, and refusing to 
be comforted, because they are not. His is that appeal to 
Ephraim — " Is he my dear son ? is he a pleasant child ?" 
which sounds like the yearning of God's own bowels. His 
the plaintive question — " Is there no balm in Gilead?" And 
his the wide wish of sorrow — " Oh that my head were waters, 
and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep night 
and day for the slain of the daughter of my people !" 

And was not this wide wish granted when, in the La- 
mentations, he poured out his heart in those deep melodies 
of desolation, mourning, and woe 1 Here, to use the beau- 
tiful language of one departed, " the scene is Jerusalem lying 
in heaps ; the poet, the child of holy inspiration, appears 
upon the ruins, and, with notes of desolation and woe, strikes 
his harp to the fallen fortunes of his country. It was not 
that the pleasant land now lay waste — and it did lie waste ; it was 
not that the daughters of Jerusalem were slain, and her streets 
ran red — and they did run red ; but it was the temple — the tem- 
ple of the Lord, with its altars, its sanctuary, its holy of holies 
levelled to the ground — rubbish where beauty stood, ruin 
where strength was : its glory fled, its music ceased, its so- 
lemn assemblies no more, and its priesthood immolated, or 
carried far away. These had shed their glory over Israel, 
and over all the land, and it was the destruction of these 
which gave its tone of woe to the heart of the Israelite in- 
deed." Yet the feelings which fill his heart to bursting are 
of a complicated character. A sense of Israel's past glory 
mingles with a sense of her guilt : he weeps over her ruin 
the more bitterly that it is self-inflicted. There is no pro- 
test taken against the severity of the divine judgments, and 
yet no patriot can more keenly appreciate, vividly describe, 
or loudly lament the splendors that were no more. We can 
conceive an angrier prophetic spirit, finding a savage luxury in 
comparing the deserted streets and desecrated shrines of Jeru- 



184 JEREmAH. 



salem with his own predictions, and crying out — " Did I not 
foretell all this?" as, with swift, resounding strides, flaming 
eye, gaunt cheek, and dishevelled hair, he passed on his way 
through them, like the spirit of their desolation, to the wil- 
derness. Jeremiah views the scene with softer feelings 
identifies himself with his country, feels Jerusalem's sword 
in his own heart, and lingers in fond admiration of its hap- 
pier times, when the sons of Zion were comparable to fine 
gold — when her Nazarites were purer than snow, whiter than 
milk, more ruddy than rubies — when the beloved city was 
full of people, great among the nations, and a princess among 
the provinces — the perfection of beauty, and the joy of the 
whole earth. 

We are reminded of the " Harp of Selma," and of blind 
Ossian sitting amidst the evening sunshine of the Highland 
valley, and in tremulous, yet aspiring notes, telling to his 
small, silent, and weeping circle, the tale of 

" Old, unhappy, far off things, 
And battles long ago." 

It has become fashionable to abuse the poems of Ossian ; 
but, admitting their forgery, as well as faultiness, they seem 
to us, in their better passages^ to approach more nearly than 
any modern English prose to the force, vividness, and pa- 
triarchal simplicity and tenderness of the Old Testament 
style. Lifting up like a curtain the mist of the past, they 
show us a world unique and intensely poetical, peopled by 
heroes, bards, maidens, and ghosts, who are swathed in mist, 
and separated by their mountains from all countries and 
ages save their own. It is a great picture, painted on clouds 
instead of canvas, and invested with colors as gorgeous as 
its shades are dark. Its pathos has a wild sobbing in it — 
an ^olian tremulousness of tone, like the wail of spirits. 
And than Ossian himself, the last of his race, answering the 
plaints of the wilderness — the plover's shriek, the " hiss" of 
the homeless stream, the bee in the heather bloom, the rustle 
of the birch above his head, the roar of the cataract behind, 
in a voice of kindred freedom and kindred melancholy, con- 
versing less with the little men around him than with the 
giant spirits of his fathers — we have few finer figures in the 
whole region of poetry. Ossian, in short, ranks with the 
Robbers and the Seasons, as a work of prodigal beauties, and 



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EZEKIEL. 187 



more prodigal faults, and, partly through both, has impressed 
the world. 

We return to the sweet, sad, singer of Israel, only to 
notice the personal interest he acquires, from the fuller de- 
tails given of his history. If less interesting by nature than 
other prophets, he is more so by circumstances. Isaiah, 
Elijah, and Ezekiel, " come like shadows, so depart." We 
know little of their ordinary life. They appear only on great 
occasions, and their appearance, like that of a comet, is gene- 
rally a signal for surprise or terror. We scarcely can con- 
ceive of them suffering from common calamities, although 
sublime agonies are often theirs. Isaiah in the stocks, in- 
stead of turning back the shadow of Ahaz ; Ezekiel, drawn 
up by a rope of rags from a dungeon, instead of being 
snatched away by the locks of his head toward heaven, seem 
incongruous conceptions. But we find Jeremiah smitten, 
put in the stocks, the yoke upon his neck broken ; we see 
him sinking in the mire of the dungeons, and drawn up 
thence by cords ; we find many similar incidents recorded in 
his histpry, which, while lessening somewhat its grandeur, 
add to its humanity. " Alas ! my brother," is our exclama- 
tion, as we witness his woes. A brother's voice, now tremu- 
lous in grief, now urgent in entreaty, now loud in anger, and 
now swelling into lofty poetry, sounds down upon us through 
the solemn centuries of the past, and we grieve that the 
grave denies us the blessings of a brother's presence, and 
the pressure of a brother's hand. 

EZEKIEL. 

But who dare claim kindred with Ezekiel, the severe, the 
mystic, the unfathomable, the lonely, whose hot hurried 
breath we feel approaching us, like the breath of a furnace 1 
Perhaps the eagle may, for Tiis eye was as keen and as fierce 
as hers. Perhaps the lion may, for his voice, too, sounded 
vast and hollow on the wilderness wind. Perhaps the wild 
ass may, for his step was, like hers, incontrollable. Or does 
he not turn away proudly from all these, and, looking up, de- 
mand as associates, the most fervid of the burning ones, those 
who, of the angelic throng, stand the nearest, and yet blench 
the least, before the throne of God 1 Does he not cry, as he 
sees the seven angels, holding the -seven last vials of divine 
13 



1 88 EZEKIEL. 



wrath, and coming forth from the " smoke of the glory of 
Grod," " These are my brethren," be mine to mingle with 
these, to be clean as these, and to bear a like " vessel of 
the Lord" with these? Does he not wish to stand apart 
even from Isaiah, Daniel, Habakkuk, and John ? 

The comparison of a comet, often used, and generally 
wasted, is strikingly applicable to Ezekiel. Sharp, distinct, 
yet nebulous, swift, sword-shaped, blood-red, he hangs in the 
Old Testament sky, rather burning as a portent, than shining 
as a prophet. It is not his magnitude, or solidity, so much 
as his intensity and his strangeness, which astonish you. It 
is not the amount of light he gives which you value so much, 
as the heat, the excitement, and the curiosity which he pro- 
duces. " From what depths, mysterious stranger, hast thou 
come ? what are the tidings of thy shadowed yet fiery beams ? 
and whither art thou bound?" are inevitable questions to 
ask at him, although the answers have not yet fully arrived. 
To use the language of another, " he is a treasury of gold 
and gems, but triple-barred, and guarded by watching 
seraphim." 

The comet, then, is but a fiery sword protecting a 
system behind it. To burst beyond a boundary so sternly 
fised, and expound the heights and depths of his mean- 
ing, is not our purpose. We shall be satisfied if we can 
catch, in dim daguerrotype, the outline of the guardian 
shape. 

Mark, first, the lofty and visionary groundwork of his 
prophecy. It is the record of a succession of trances. The 
prophet usually hangs high between earth and the regions of 
the ethereal. A scenery^ gigantic as that of dreams, select 
as that of pictures, rich as that of fancy, and distinct as that 
of nature, surrounds his motions, and swims before his eye. 
The shapes which he had seen in the temple come back upon 
his captive vision, but come back, altered in form, enlarged 
in size, and shining in the radiance of the divine glory. 
How terrific the composite of the four living creatures, with 
their four faces and wings, seen amid a confusion of light and 
darkness, of still fire and leaping lightnings, of burnished 
brass and burning coals, coupled with the high rings of the 
eyed wheels, unified by the spirit moving in them all, over- 
hung by the terrible crystal of a firmament, and that again 
by the sapphire throne, and that again by the similitude of a 



EZEKIEL. 189 



man seated upon it, surrounded, as they pursue their strait, 
stern, path, by the girdle of a rainbow, which softens the 
fiery storm, and moving to the music of a multitude of 
waters, " as the noise of a host," which is commanded from 
above by a mightier, solitary voice — the voice of the Eter- 
nal ! What pencil shall represent to us the glory of this 
apparition? or who, but one whose brow had been made 
adamant, and whose eye had been cleansed with lightning, 
could have faced it as it passed? Or shall we look at the 
prophet again, seized by the form of a man's hand, lifted up 
by a lock of his hair between earth and heaven, and brought 
from Chebar to Jerusalem? or shall we follow him, as he 
passes down the deepening abominations of his country ? or 
shall we witness with him the man clothed with linen, bap- 
tizing Jerusalem with fire ? or shall we descend after him 
into that nameless valley, full of dry bones 1 or shall we 
take our stand beside him on that high hill, higher far than 
that of Mirza's vision, or than any peak in the Delectable 
Mountains, and see the great city on the south, or hear the 
rush of the holy waters, encompassing the earth ? Visions 
these, for which the term sublime is lowly, and the term 
" poetic" poor. From heaven, in some clear future day, might 
be expected to fall down at once the epithets which can ex- 
press their glory, and the light which can explain their 
meaning. 

We mark, next, besides his visions, a singular abundance 
and variety of typical acts and attitudes. Now, he eats a 
roll, of a deadly sweetness. Now he enacts a mimic siege 
against a tile, representing Jerusalem. Now he shaves his 
beard and hair, burns a third part in the fire, smites a third 
part with a knife, scatters a third part to the winds, reserv- 
ing only a few hairs as a remnant. Now he makes and shows 
a chain, as the worthy recompense of an evil and an insane 
generation. Now he prepares stuff for removing, and brings 
it out day after day in the sight of all. Now he stands 
with bread and water in his hands, but with bread, 
water, hands, body, and head, trembling, as if in some 
unheard storm, as a sign of coming tremors and tempests 
among his people. And now, sad necessity, the desire of his 
eyes, his wife, is taken away by a stroke ; yet God's seal is 
set upon his lips, forbidding him to mourn. It was the sole 
link binding him to earth, and, once broken, he becomes 



igo 



EZEKIEL. 



loosened, and free as a column of smoke separated from the 
sacrifice, and gilded into flame by the setting sun. 

Such types suited the ardent temperament of the East. 
They were its best oratorical gestures. They expressed what 
the waving of hands, the bending of knees, and the beating 
of breasts, could not fully do. They were solidified figures. 
Modern ages can show nothing equal or similar, for Burke's 
dagger must, by universal consent, be sheathed. But still 
the roll, the tile, the hair, the chain, the quaking bread and 
water, of Ezekiel, shall be preserved as specimens of an 
extinct tongue, the strangest and strongest ever spoken on 
earth. 

We mark, next, with all critics, a peculiar boldness of 
spirit and vehemence of language. How can he fear man, 
who had trembled not in the presence of visions, the report 
of which on his page is yet able to bristle the hair and chill 
the blood ? Thrown into heaven's heat, as into a furnace, he 
comes forth indurated to suffering and to shame — his face a 
flint, his '• brow adamant," his eye a coal of supernatural fire. 
Ever afterwards, his style seems hurrying in chase of the 
"wheels," and his colors of speech are changing and gor- 
geous as the light which surrounded them. That first vision 
seen on Chebar's banks, becomes his ideal, and all his after 
predictions either reach, or aim at reaching, its glory. A 
certain rough power, too, distinguishes many of his chapters. 
He is " naked, and is not ashamed." As he felt bound to 
give a severe and literal transcript of the " things of heaven" 
which he saw, he conceives himself bound also literally to 
transcribe the things of earth and hell. 

Notwithstanding this impetuosity, there comes sometimes 
across his jet black lyre, with its fiery strings, a soft beauti- 
ful music, which sounds more sweetly and strangely from the 
medium it has found. It is not pathos, but elegant beauty, 
reposing amid rude strength, like a finished statue found in 
an aboriginal cave. There is, for instance, a picture in the 
16th chapter, which a high judge calls the "most delicately- 
beautiful in the written language of men." " Then washed I 
thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood 
from thee, and I anointed thee with oil. I clothed thee also 
with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and 
I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with 
silk. I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put brace- 



EZEKIEL. 



191 



lets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck. And I put a 
jewel on thy forehead, and ear-rings in thine ears, and a 
beautiful crown upon thine head. Thus w?»st thou decked 
with gold and silver, and thy raiment- was of fine linen, and 
silk, and broidered work ; thou didst eat fine flour, and 
honey, and oil : and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou 
didst prosper into a kingdom. And thy renown went forth 
among the heathen for thy beauty : for it was perfect through 
my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord 
God." This seems a fragment of Solomon's Song; it is a 
jewel dropped from the forehead of his " spouse," and acts as 
v^foil to the fearful minuteness of description which charac- 
terizes the rest of the chapter. In this point of his genius, 
Ezekiel resembles Dante. Like Dante, he loves the terrible ; 
but, like Dante too, the beautiful seems to love him. 

Sprinkled, besides, amidst the frequent grandeurs and 
rare beauties of his book, are practical appeals, of close and 
cogent force. Such, for instance, are his picture of a watch- 
man's duty, his parable of sour grapes, his addresses at va- 
rious times to the shepherds, to the elders, and to the people 
of Israel. From dim imaginative heights, he comes down, 
like Moses from the darkness of Sinai, with face shining and 
foot stamping out indignation against a guilty people, who 
thought him lost upon his aerial altitudes. He is at once 
the most poetical and practical of preachers. This paradox 
has not unfrequently been exemplified in the history of 
preaching, as the names of Chrysostom, Taylor, Howe, Hall, 
and Chalmers, can testify. He who is able to fly upwards, 
is able to return, and with tenfold impetus, from his flight. 
The poet, too, has an intuitive knowledge of the springs of 
human nature which no study and no experience can fully 
supply, and which enables him, ^hen he turns from his 
visions to the task, to " pierce to the dividing asunder of 
soul and spirit, of the joints and marrow," and to become a 
" discerner of the thoughts and- intents of the heart." In 
Ezekiel's prophecy, ve find visions and practical exhorta- 
tions almost equally blended — the dark and the clear alter- 
nate, and produce a fine chiaro-scuro, like 

" That beautiful uncertain weather, 
Where gloom and glory meet together." 

On the range of prophetic mountains, overlooking the 



192 



EZEKIEL. 



Pagan lands, Ezekiel, like his brethren, has a summit, and a 
dark and high summit it is. The fire which he flings abroad 
from it comes from a " furnace heated seven times hotter" than 
that of the rest. He dallies with the destruction of Israel's 
foes ; he " rolls it as a sweet morsel under his tongue ;" he 
protracts the fierce luxury ; he throws it out into numerous 
imaginative shapes, that he may multiply his pleasure. He 
sings in the ear of one proud oppressor the fate of a former, 
as the forerunner of his own. He mingles a bitter irony 
with his denunciations. He utters, for example, a lanieMa- 
tion over Egypt ; and such a lamentation — a lamentation 
without sorrow, nay, full of exulting and trampling gladness. 
And at last, opening the wide mouth of Hades, he throws 
in — " heaps upon heaps" — all Israel's enemies — Pharaoh, 
Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom, the Zidonians, in " ruin re- 
conciled" — and with a shout of laughter leaves them massed 
together in one midnight of common destruction. 

Ezekiel was a priest as well as a prophet, and alludes 
more frequently than any of the prophets to the ceremonial 
institutes of the temple. He was every inch a Jew ; and 
none of the prophets possessed more attachment to their 
country, more zeal for their law, and more hatred to its foes. 
It is not enough for him to predict the ruin of Zion's pre- 
sent enemies ; he must spring forward into the future, orga- 
nize and bring up from the far north a shadowy army of 
enemies, Gog and Magog, against the mountains of Israel, 
and please his insatiate spirit of patriotism, by whelming 
them also in a vaster and a final doom. And leaving them to 
their " seven months' burial," he hurries away, in the hand 
of Grod, to the very high mountain, where, in place of the fall- 
en temple and deserted streets of Jerusalem, the new city, 
the new temple, and the new country of the prince appear 
before his view, and comfort him under the darkness of the 
present, by the transcendent glories of the future hovering 
over the history of his beloved people. 

Such a being was Ezekiel — among men, but not of them 
r— detained in the company of flesh, his feet on earth, his 
soul floating amid the cherubim. We have tried to describe 
him ; but perhaps it had been our wisdom to have said only, 
as he heard it said to an object representing well the swift- 
ness, strength, and impetuosity of his own gpipit^— " 
wheel !" 



EZEKIEL. 195 

Amplification is asserted, by Eichhorn and others, to be 
the peculiarity of Ezekiel. It was as truly asserted by Hall, 
to be the differentia of Burke. He no doubt describes mi- 
nutely the objects before him ; but this because, more than 
other prophets, he had objects visually presented, complicated 
and minute to describe. But his description of them is 
always terse and succinct ; indeed, the stern literality with 
which he paints ideal and spiritual figures is one cause of 
his obscurity. He never deals with his visions artistically 
or by selection, but seems simply to turn his soul out before 
us, to daguerreotype the dimmest of his dreams. Thus, too, 
Burke, from the vividness of his imagination, seems often to 
be rhetorically expanding and exaggerating, while, in fact, 
he is but severely copying from the large pictures which have 
arisen before his view. 

We know little of this prophet's history : it is marked 
chiefly by the procession of his predictions, as during twenty- 
one years they marched onwards to the mountain-top, where 
they were abruptly closed. But we cannot successfully 
check our fancy, as she seeks to represent to us the face 
and figure of this our favorite prophet. We see him young, 
slender, long-locked, stooping, as if under the burden of the 
Lord — with a visible fire in his eye and cheek, and an invi- 
sible fire about his motions and gestures, earnest purpose 
pursuing him like a ghost, a wild beauty hanging around 
him, like the blossom on the thorn-tree, and the air of early 
death adding a supernatural age and dignity to his youthful 
aspect. We see him, as he moved through the land, a sun- 
gilded storm, followed by looks of admiration, wonder, and 
fear ; and, like the hero of " Excelsior," untouched by the 
love of maidens, unterrified by the counsel of elders, undis- 
mayed by danger or by death, climbing straight to his 
object. We see him, at last, on the Mount of Vision — the 
Pisgah of prophecy — first, with rapturous wonder, saluting 
the spectacle of that mystic city and those holy waters — then 
crying out, " Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace, for 
mine eyes have seen thy salvation" — and at last, behold, the 
burning soul exhales through the burning eyes, and the 
wearied body falls down in his own solitary chamber — for it 
had been indeed a " dream," but a dream as true as are the 
future reign of Jesus and the future glory of the city and 
church of God, 



196 DANIEL. 



DANIEL. 

We require almost to apologize for introducing Daniel 
into the same cluster of prophets with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and 
Ezekiel. And this not because it is rich enough without 
him, still less that he is not worthy of the conjunction, but 
that he seems at first to belong to a different order of men. 
They were prophets, and little else. He was a chief coun- 
sellor in a great empire. They seem to have been poor, soli- 
tary, and wandering men. despised and rejected ; he was the 
favorite of monarchs. Their predictions exposed them to 
danger and shame ; his " dreams" drew him aloft to riches 
and honor. They were admitted now and then among 
princes, because they were prophets ; but his power of pro- 
phecy made him a prince. Their predictions came generally 
naked to their waking eyes — they were day-dreams ; but his 
were often softened and shaded by the mist of sleep. And 
yet we do feel justified in putting the well-conditioned and 
gold-hung Daniel beside the gaunt, hungry, and wild-eyed 
sons of the prophets we have just been picturing. Souls, 
and dark piercing eyes expressing similar souls, are kindred, 
whether they burn 'neath the brows of beggars or of kings. 

" Sleep on," said an unhappy literary man, over the dust 
of Bunyan, in Bunhillfields, '' thou prince of dreamers." 
Prince the third he was ; for, while Joseph is the first, Dan- 
iel is the second monarch in this dim dynasty. His pillow 
was at times a throne — the throne of his genius, the throne 
of empires, and of all future ages. His imagination, fet- 
tered during the day by the cares of state, launched out at 
night into the sea of futurity, and brought home, from its 
remotest shores, spoils of which we are only yet learning the 
value and the meaning. It was by understanding the cipher 
of his own dreams, that he learned to expound that of oth- 
ers. As the poet is the best, nay, only true critic of poetry 
— as the painter can best understand pictures — and the ora- 
tor best appreciate, whoever else may feel, eloquence — the 
dreamer alone can expound dreams. 

Ovap ea-Ti Aios — " a dream is from God," is one of the 
earliest, shortest, and truest of sentences. Strange, stutter- 
ing, imperfect, but real and direct messengers from the In- 
finite, are our dreams. Like worn-out couriers, dying with 




DAIHEL AND THE HEBREW YOUTH 



DANIEL. 199 

their news at the threshold of the door, dreams seem some- 
times unable to utter their tidings. Or is it rather that we 
do not yet understand their language, and must often thus 
lay missives aside, which contain at once our duty and our 
destiny ? No theory of dreams as yet seems entirely satis- 
factory ; but most imperfect are those theories which deny 
in them any preternatural and prophetic element. What 
man for years watches his dreams — ranges them each morn- 
ing round his couch — compares them with each other, " spi- 
ritual things with spiritual" — compares them with events — 
without the profound conviction that a superhuman power 
is '-floating, mingling, interweaving," with those shapeless 
shades — that in dreams he often converses with the dead, 
meets with the loosened spirits of the sleeping upon com- 
mon ground, exerts powers unknown to his waking moments, 
recalls the past though perished, sees the present though 
distant, and descries many a clear spot through the mist of 
the future ? The dreaming world — as the regions where all 
elements are mingled, all contradictions reconciled, all tenses 
lost in one — supplies us with the only faint conception we 
have of that awful now, in which the Eternal dwells. In 
every dream does not the soul, like a stream, sink transiently 
into the deep abyss, whence it came, and where it is to merge 
at death, and are not the confusion and incoherence of dreams 
just the hubbub, the foam, and the struggle, with which the 
river weds the ocean ? 

But all dreams, which ever waved rapture over the brow 
of youthful genius, dreaming of love or heaven, or which 
ever distilled poison on the drugged and desperate repose 
of unhappy bard or philosopher, who has experienced the 
" pains of sleep," or cried aloud, as he awoke in struggles — 
" I shall sleep no more," must yield, in magnitude, grandeur, 
and comprehensiveness, to the dreams which Daniel ex- 
pounded or saw. They are all colossal in size, as befitted 
dreams dreamed in the palaces of Babylon. No ears of corn, 
blasted or flourishing — no kine, fat or lean — appear to Daniel ; 
but ]iere stands up a great image, with head of gold, breast 
of silver, bell}^ of brass, and feet of iron, mingled with mire 
clay ; and there waves a tree, tall as heaven, and broad as 
earth. Here^ again, as the four winds are striving upon the 
ocean, four monstrous forms emerge, and there appears the 
throne of the Ancient of Days, with all its appurtenances of 



200 DANIEL. 



majesty and insignia of justice. Empires, religions, the 
history of time, the opening gateways of eternity, are all 
spanned by those dreams. No wonder that monarchs sprang 
up trembling and troubled from their sight, and that one of 
them changed the countenance of the prophet^ as years of 
anguish could not have done. 

They are recounted in language grave, solemn, serene. 
The poetry of Daniel lies rather in the objects presented 
than in the figures or the language of the description. The 
vehemence, pathos, or fury, which, in various measures, cha- 
racterized his brethren, are not found in him. A calm uni- 
form dignity distinguishes all his actions and words. It 
forsakes not his brow even while he is astonished for one hour 
in the presence of the monarch. It enters with him as he 
enters, awful in holiness, into the hall of Belshazzar's feast. 
It sits over him in the lion's den, like a canopy of state ; and 
it sustains his style to its usual even exalted pitch in de- 
scribing the session of the Ancient of Days, and the fiery 
stream which goes forth before him. 

Besides those dreams, there are interspersed incidents of 
the most romantic and poetical character. Indeed, Daniel 
is the most romantic book of Scripture. There is the burn- 
ing, fiery furnace, with the fourth Man walking through it, 
where three only had been cast in ; there is the story of Ne- 
buchadnezzar, driven from men, but restored again to his 
kingdom, and becoming an humble worshipper of the God 
of heaven ; there is the hall of Belshazzar, with the armless 
hand and unread letters burning from the wall ; and there 
is the figure of Daniel in the den, swaying the lions by his 
eye, and his holiness — emblem of a divine philosophy — sooth- 
ing the savage passions of clay. 

Perhaps, after all, the great grandeur of Daniel's pro- 
phecy arises from its frequent glimpses of the coming One. 
Over all the wondrous emblems and colossal confusions of 
his visions, there is seen slowly, yet triumphantly, rising, one 
head and form — the form of a man, the head of a prince. 
It is the Messiah painting himself upon the sky of the fu- 
ture. This vision at once interpenetrates and overtops all 
tiie rest. Gathering from former prophets the separate rays 
of his glory which they saw, Daniel forms them into one 
kingly shape : this shape he brings before the Ancient 
of Days — to him assigns the task of defending the holy 



DANIEL. 20 1 



people — at his feet lays the keys of universal empire, 
and leaves him judging the quick and the dead. To Daniel, 
it was permitted to bring forth the first full birth of that 
great thought, which has ever since been the life of the 
church and the hope of the world. 

And now, too, must this dignified counsellor, this fearless 
saint, this ardent patriot, this blameless man, this magnifi- 
cent dreamer, pass away from our page. He was certainly 
one of the most admirable of Scripture worthies. His cha- 
racter was formed in youth ; it was retained in defiance of 
the seductions and of the terrors of a court. His genius, 
furnished with every advantage of education, and every 
variety of Pagan learning, was consecrated to God ; the 
window of his prophecy, like that of his chamber, stood open 
toward Jerusalem. Over his death, as over that of the for- 
mer three, there hangs a cloud of darkness. The deaths of 
the patriarchs and the kings are recorded, but the prophets 
drop suddenly from their airy summits, and we see and hear 
of them no more. Was Isaiah sawn asunder? We cannot 
tell. Did Jeremiah perish a martyr in Egypt ? We cannot 
tell. Did Ezekiel die in youth, crucified on the fiery cross 
of his own temperament ? We cannot tell. And how came 
Daniel, the prince of dreamers, to his end ? Did he, old, 
and full of honors, die amidst some happy Sabbath dream ? 
Or did he depart, turning his eyes through his open window 
toward that beloved city where the hammers of reconstruc- 
tion were already resounding ? We cannot tell. No matter : 
the messages are with us, while the men are away ; the mes- 
sages are certain, while the fate of the men is wrapt in 
doubt. This is in fine keeping with the severe reserve of 
Scripture, and with the character of its writers. Munificent 
and modest benefactors, they knocked at the door of the 
human family at night, threw in inestimable wealth, fled, 
and the sound of their feet, dying away in the distance, is 
all the tidings they have given of themselves. 



202 THE MINOR PROPHETS. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE MINOR PROPHETS, 

Beside the " giant angels " of Hebrew song, appears a series 
of " stripling cherubs," who are commonly called the minor' 
prophets. They inherit this name, because some, though by 
no means all of them, flourished at a later date than the 
others — because their prophecies are shorter — because their 
genius was of a humbler order, although still that order was 
high — »nd because, while their genuineness and inspiration 
are conceded, they have never bulked so largely in the eye of 
the Church. If the constellation of large stars described in 
the former chapter may be compared to the cross of the south, 
this now in sight reminds us of the Pleiades : it is a mass of 
minute particles of glory, which may be somewhat difficult to 
divide asunder. 

These smaller predictions have all a fragmentary charac- 
ter, and a great occasional obscurity, which has annoyed 
translators and verbal critics. What is written in brief 
space is generally written in brief time ; and what is written 
rapidly is often full of rude boldness, abrupt transitions, and 
violent inversions. Hence, too, a difficulty which touches our 
province more closely, the difficulty of defining the peculiarity 
of each of the prophets. They have left only footprints on 
that dim old Hebrew soil, and from these we must gather 
their strength, age, and size. Cuvier's task of inferring a 
mastodon from a bone, here requires renewal. The very 
tread, indeed, of some animals, bewrays them ; but then, that 
is either gigantic, as the trample of elephants, or peculiar as 
the mark which a rare and solitary bird leaves upon the sand 
or snow. But here, many rare and solitary birds have left 
their prints, close beside each other, and how to distinguish 
between them ? 

The order in which the minor prophets appear in our 
version is not the correct one. We prefer that of Dr. New- 
come, who classes them according to the respective dates of 
their lives and predictions. According to his arrangement, 
the first is 



JONAH. 205 



JONAH. 

All known about this prophet, besides what is told us in 
his book, is simply that he lived in or before the reign of 
Jeroboam the Second, and was born in Grath-hepher, in the 
tribe of Zebulun. 

The story of Jonah wondrous as it is, seems like that of 
Cambuscan and Christabel, only " half told." It breaks off 
so abruptly, that you almost fancy that a part had been torn 
away from the close. " Jonah " possesses little pure poetry. 
That song of deliverance, said, by some absurd mistake of 
transcribers, to have issued from the whale's belly, instead 
of, as its every word imports, being sung upon the shore, is 
the only specimen of the prophet's genius. Although not 
uttered, it was perhaps conceived in the strangest prison 
where man ever breathed, fitly called the "belly of hell" (or 
the grave), where a deep within a deep, a ward within the 
'•innermost main," confined the body without crushing the 
spirit of the fugitive prophet. It is a sigh of the sea — a 
'' voice from the deeps," audible to this hour. The most ex- 
pressive word, perhaps, in it all, is the pronoun " thy " — " thy 
billows and thy waves have passed over me." Think of 
God's ocean being felt as all pressing against that living dun- 
geon, and demanding, in the thunder of all its surges, the 
fugitive of Tarshish, and yet, after exciting unspeakable ter- 
ror and remorse, demanding him in vain ! With what a 
complicated feeling of thankfulness and reflex terror, he 
seems to have regarded his danger and his deliverance ! 
And how the strange shrine he had found for groans un- 
heard, vows unwitnessed, and prayers broken by the lashing 
of the monster's tail, or by the grinding of his teeth, sug- 
gests the far off temple, the privileges of which he had never 
so much valued, as now, when, seen from the " belly of hell," 
it seemed the very gate of heaven ! 

But the poetry of the Book of Jonah is not coofined to 
this little strain. Every thing about it. 

" Suffers a sea change, 
Into something rich and strange." v 

There is, first, the abrupt call to the Jewish prophet, to re- 
pair alone, and confront that great city, the name of which 



2o6 JONAH. 



was a terror in his native land. It was a task whicli might 
have blanched the cheek of Isaiah, and chilled the blood of 
Ezekiel. They stood afar ofiF as they predicted the destruc- 
tion and torment of Israel's enemies ; but Jonah must draw 
near, and encounter fierce looks of hatred, if not imprison- 
ment and death. And yet, it was not without a severe 
struggle that he determined to disobey, for hitherto he had 
been a faithful servant of Grod. But, perhaps, some misbe- 
gotten dream had crossed his couch, stunned his soul with 
the noises of Nineveh, lost him amidst its vast expanse, ter- 
rified him with its seas of faces, and so shaken his courage, 
that the next day he arose and fled from the breath of the 
Lord, crying out. If the semblance be so dreadful, what must 
be the reality ? And westward to Joppa, looking not behind 
him, ran Jonah. While Balaam was the first impious pro- 
phet on record, Jonah is the first temporizer and trifler with 
the gift and mission of God, Irritable in disposition, per- 
haps indolent, perhaps self-seeking, certainly timid, he per- 
mits his temperament to triumph over his inspiration. It is 
the tale of thousands, who, from the voice of the Lord which 
surrounds them, like an eddying wind, and says, " Onward to 
duty, to danger, to glory, and immortality," flee to the Tarshish 
of pleasure, or to that of business which is not theirs, or to 
that of selfish inaction, or to that of a not less selfish despair. 
It is well for them if a storm disturb their course, and drive 
them into the true port, as poverty did to Johnson, and as 
misery to Cowper ; but more frequently — 



" As they drift upon their path, 
There is silence deep as death." 



silence, amidst which their last plunge in the dead sea of ob- 
livion, and their last drowning gurgle, become audible, as 
thunder on the summer deep. 

We have, as the next scene in this singular history, Jo- 
nah gone down into the ship, and sunk in sleep. This was 
no proof of insensibility. Sleep often says to the eyes of the 
happy, " Burn on, through midnight, like the stars ; ye have 
no need of me ;" but to those of the wretched, " I will fold 
you in my mantle, and bury you in sweet oblivion till the 
morning come." In certain states of desolation, there lies 
a power which draws down irresistibly the coverlet of sleep. 
Not in the fulness of security, but of insecurity ; not in per- 



JONAH. 207 



feet peace, but in desperate recklessness, Jonah was over- 
powered bj slumber. He slept, but the sea did not. The 
sight of a slumbering sinner can awake the universe. But 
the rocking ship, the roaring sea, and the clamorous sailors, 
only confirmed the slumber of the prophet — even as the dead 
in the centre of the city seem to sleep more soundly than in 
the country — who hears of their apparitions % Roused he is 
at last by the master, who is more terrified at his unnatural 
sleep, than at the sea's wild vigil. " What meanest thou, O 
sleeper ; arise, call upon thy Grod, if so be that thy Grod will 
think of of us, that we perish not." The Grod of the fugi- 
tive and slumbering Jonah is felt after all to be their safety, 
and in awakening the prophet, they feel as if they were 
awakening his Deity. He had an angry God, but they had 
none. 

How different the sleep of Jonah from the sleep of Jesus 
on the lake of Gralilee ! The one is the sleep of desperation, 
the other of peace ; the one that of the criminal, the other of 
the child ; the one that of Grod's fugitive, the other of his fa- 
vorite ; the darkness over the head of the one is the frown of 
anger ; the other the mask upon the forehead of love ! But 
each is the centre of his several ship — each, in different ways, 
is the cause of the storm ; in each, in different ways, lies 
the help of the vessel ; each must awake — the criminal 
to lighten the ship of his burden ; the Son to rebuke 
the winds and waves, and produce immediately a great 
calm. 

The moment Jonah entered the ship, instinct probably 
told the sailors that all was not right with him. The fugitive 
from God carries about him as distinct marks as the fugitive 
from man. He, too, has the restless motion, the unhappy 
eye, the unaccountable agitation, the mutilated, or the melan- 
choly repose. He, too has the " Avenger of blood" behind 
him. Who has not witnessed such God-chased men, fleeing 
from a great purpose of intellect, a high ideal of life, noble 
prospects — from their happiness itself — and the faster they 
fled, the more lamentable became the chase? And who has 
not felt, too, that the place where such recreants were was 
dangerous, since they had become as a " rolling thing before 
the whirlwind" of divine wrath % And what inscription can 
be conceived more painful than that which must be sculptured 
upon the sepulchres of such — •• Fallen from a great hope ?" 



208 



JONAH. 



Jonah had betrayed his secret by words as well as by looks. 
" He had told them that he had fled from the presence of the 
Lord." And after his lot is drawn, he proffers himself 
willingly to the sacriffce, for his conscience had awaked 
with him, and he began to fear the roused sea less, than to 
remain in the midst of a drowning ship and a desperate crew. 
It was better to " fall into the hands of God than of men." 
And so soon as the victim, who had been demanded by all 
those waves, small and great, shrieking or sunk, clear-crashing 
or hoarse, was yielded to their fury, a sullen growl of satis- 
faction first, then a loud signal for retreat, and, lastly, a whis- 
per commanding universal silence, seem to testify that the 
sacrifice is accepted, the ship safe, and Jonah at the mercy of 
the deep. Even so when depart the self-stunted great, or 
the inconsistent and undeveloped good, man and nature seem 
to say, half in sorrow, and half in gladness, but wholly in 
submission, " It is well." 

But Jonah must not yet depart ; he had yet work to do, 
sufferings to bear, sins to contract, a name of checkered in- 
terest to leave to the world. " The Lord had prepared a 
great fish to swallow up Jonah. As a " creature of the great 
calm," which was suddenly produced on the sea, there ap- 
peared, emerging from the lowermost deep, and attracted, it 
might be, by the wondrous silence which had followed the 
wondrous storm, an enormous fish, which swallowed the 
prophet, and descended with him into the sea again. We do 
not seek to prove or to commend this incident to the logical 
intellect or the sensuous apprehension ; we look at it our- 
selves, and show it to others, in the light oi faith. Nor let 
any one think himself of superior understanding, because he 
disbelieves it. If it had been a foolish legend, why have so 
many self-conceited fools rejected it ; and why has it been 
believed by Milton, by Newton, and by " him who spake as 
never man spake?" As it is, this great fish doth show its 
back, " most dolphin-like," above the waves, and floats at once 
an emblem of God's forbearance to his feeble and fugitive 
ones, and of the faithfulness of his promise to his own buried 
Son — " As Jonah was three days and three nights in the 
whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and 
three nights in the heart of the earth." 

After being thrown out on the shore nearest Assyria, and 
singing his gong of thanksgiving, Jonah, thus strangely re- 



JONAH. 



209 



called to his post, is urged again by the woi d of the Lord to 
enter Nineveh. A " dreadful sound," the sound of the sea, 
is in his ears, repeating the call. Alone, and unnoticed in 
a crowd composed of the confluence of all nations, he enters 
the capital of the East. After, perhaps, a short silence, the 
silence of wonder at the sight of that living ocean, he raises 
his voice. At first, feeble, tremulous, scarcely heard, it is 
swollen by every tributary street, as he passes, into a loud, 
imperious sound, which all the cries of Nineveh are unable 
to drown. " Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over- 
thrown " It is but a simple sentence, uttered again and 
again, in terms unvaried. Its tones, as well as its terms, 
aiw the same ; it is a deep monotony, as if learned from a 
dying wave. Its effect is aided, too, by the appearance of 
the prophet. Haggard by watchfulness, soiled by travel, 
" bearded like the pard," with a wild, hungry fire in his eye, 
he seems hardly a being of this earth. Nineveh is smitten 
to the heart. Ere he has pierced one-third of it, it capitu- 
lates to the message, the voice, and the figure of this stranger. 
The king proclaims a fast, and all, from the greatest to the 
least, put on sackcloth. And still on amidst those trembling, 
fasting, and sackcloth-clad multitudes, slowly and steadfastly 
moves the solitary man, looking neither to the right hand 
nor to the left, but uttering, in the same unmitigated tone, 
the same incessant cry, " Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall 
be overthrown." 

We have here a striking proof of the power which units, 
when placed on the right side — that of God and truth — 
usually exert over the masses of men. As the figure one is 
to the ciphers, few or many, which range after it, so is the 
hero, the saint, the poet, the prophet, and the sage, to their 
species. One man enters. Fifty-four years ago, the "Western 
Metropolis of Scotland ; sits quietly down in a plain house, 
in the northwest suburb, and writes sermons, which speedily 
change his pulpit into a battery, and memorize every Sabbath 
by a moral thunderstorm. Private as pestilence, comes ano- 
ther, five years later, into London, and his wild cry, lonely, 
at first, as that of John's in the desert, at last startles the 
press, the parliament, the court, the country without, the 
throne within, and it is felt that the one man has conquered 
the two millions. Nay, was there not, two thousand years 
ago, from an obscure mount in Galilee, heard a voice, saying, 



2IO JONAH. 



" Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven ;" and has not that voice, though clouded by opposi- 
tion, choked in blood, crushed under the gravestone, at length 
commanded the attention, if not yet the obedience of the 
world ? Let no one say in despair, " I am but one ;" in his 
unity, as in the unity of a sword, lies his might — if his metal 
be true, his singleness is strength — he may be multiplied, 
indeed, but he cannot be divided. Minorities, and minorities 
of one, generally do the real work of mankind. 

The last scene of Jonah's history partakes of the same 
marvellous character with the rest. God determines to spare 
the city, at its crying. Jonah is angry. His occupation is 
gone — his character for veracity is impeached — he has be- 
come a false prophet — better have been rolling in the deep 
still, than to face the people of Nineveh when the forty days 
are past. He is angry, and he wishes to die — to die, be- 
cause millions are not ! 

Expecting the destruction of the city by earthquake or 
flame from heaven, he had gone out from it, and erected a 
booth or shelter, to screen his head from the sun ; and he 
is there when he hears of the respite granted to the city. A 
fiercer fire than the sun's is now kindled in his heart ; and, 
mingling with the heat which the booth imperfectly alleviates, 
it drives him almost to frenzy. He assails Omnipotence 
with savage irony. In answer, Grod prepares a large gourd, 
or species of palm, which springs up like an exhalation, and 
steeps his head with grateful coolness. Jonah is glad of it ; 
it somewhat mollifies his indignant feelings, and under its 
shadow he sinks into repose. He awakes ; the morning has 
risen like a furnace, but the gourd is withered ; a worm has 
destroyed it, its cool shade is gone, and the arid leaves seem 
of fire, as they bend above his head, in a vehement but dry 
east wind which has sprung up. He faints, partly in pain, 
and partly in sorrow because of the green and beautiful plant, 
and renews, in bitterer accents, his yesterday's cry, " It is 
better for me to die than to live.'* Slowly there drop down 
upon him, from heaven, the words, " Dost thou well to be angry 
for the gourd ?" and he answers, in the quick accents of de- 
spite and fury, " I do well to be angry, even unto death ! 
Be angry, yea, I could die for my gourd." " Then, saith the 
Lord, thou hast had pity on the plant, for which thou hast 
not labored, neither madest it grow, which in a night rose, 



JONAH. 211 



and in a night perished (which was not thine, and which only 
for a few hours was with thee). And should not I have 
mercy on that great city, Nineveh, wherein are more 
than sixscore thousand persons, who cannot discern between 
their right hand and left hand (innocent as the gourd itself!), 
and also much cattle (poor dumb ones) !" And there, to the 
imagination, still sits tfte stunned and downcast prophet, the 
great city in sight, and shining in the sun — the low of hun- 
dreds of cattle in his ears — the bitter wind in his eyes and 
in his hair — disappointment and chagrin in his heart — and, 
hanging over his naked head, the fragments of the withered 
plant. Who would care to go and to sit down along with 
him? 

And yet not a few have gone, and sat beside J onah under 
that shade of tattered fire ! The fierce, hopeless infidel, who 
would like Cain kill his brother, because he cannot compre- 
hend his God; the dogmatist, who has learned his "lesson of 
despair" so thoroughly, that the ease with which he recites it 
seems a voucher for its truth ; the gloomy Christian, who 
lingers a needless hour around the skirts of Sinai, instead of 
seeing its summits sinking afar ofi" in the distance ; the vic- 
tim of vanity and disappointment, who has confounded his 
voice and identified its rejection, with the voice and the re- 
jection of God ; the misanthrope, who says, '• Would that all 
men were liars ;" and the fanatic, who grieves that the heav- 
ens do not respond to his vindictive feelings, and leave him 
and his party standing alone in the solitude which the race 
has left ; such, and others, have partaken of the momentary 
madness, and shared in the dreary shelter of the prophet. 

He, we trust, arose from under the gourd, and humbled, 
melted, instructed, resumed the grand functions of his office. 
It is of comparatively little moment whether he did or not, 
as the principles inscribed on his prophecy remain in any 
case the same. These are, first, to fly from duty is to fly 
to danger ; secondly, deliverance from danger often con 
ducts to new and tenfold perils, and involves tenfold respon 
sibilities ; thirdly, a duty delayed is a duty doubled ; fourth 
ly, the one voice of an earnest man is a match for millions 
fifthly, an error in the truest prophet can degrade his char- 
acter, and cast a shade of doubt upon his name ; and sixthly 
God would rather lower the good report of any of his mes 
sengers, than endanger one syllable of his own recorded 



212 AMOS. 



name, " The Lord Grod, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, 
and slow to anger." 

AMOS. 

This prophet lived nearly 800 years before Christ. 
While employed as an herdsman, he was summoned to lift 
up his voice against Israel. Driven from Bethel, by the ca- 
lumnies of the idolatrous priest Amaziah, he fled to Tekoah, 
a small town ten miles south of Jerusalem ; and afterwards, 
we hear of him no more. 

As Burns among the poets, is Amos among the prophets. 
Few, indeed, of that company could be called cultured ; but 
Amos was especially destitute of training. He comes 
straight from the cattle-stall and the solitary pasture. A 
strong bull of Bashan, he leaps in, " two years before the 
earthquake," and bellows out, " The Lord will roar from 
Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem." He turns his 
first fury upon the neighboring idolatrous nations ; and short, 
deep, decisive, are the crashes of his thunder against Da- 
mascus, Gaza, Tyrus, Edom, Ammon, and Moab. His bur- 
dens are only words ; but they are words of doom. A nation 
falls in every sentence. " I will send a fire into the house 
of Hazael — a fire on the wall of Gaza — a fire on the palaces 
of Tyrus — a fire upon Teman — a fire in the wall of Kab- 
bah." And having flung those forked flashes at the neighbor- 
ing nations, he pours out on Judah and Israel his full and 
overflowing ire. Israel, at the time of Amos, had partially 
recovered its ancient possessions and grandeur, and more 
than its ancient pride, injustice, and luxury. It required to 
be startled from its selfish dream, by the rude cries of this 
holy herdsman, whose utterances are abrupt, unvaried, and 
laconic, as midnight alarms of fire. Ceremony there is none 
with Amos. Nor, like some of his brethren, does he ever 
indulge in long and swelling passages, whether of allegory 
or description. His propecy is principally composed of 
short threatenings, short prayers, sudden exclamations, and, 
above all, startling questions. " Prepare to meet thy God, 
O Israel." " Woe unto you who desire the day of the Lord! 
that day is darkness and not light." '• I hate and despise 
your feast-days." " Take away from me the noise of your 
songs." " In all vineyards shall be wailing, for I will pass 
through thee, saith the Lord." But interrogation is his 




THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN. 



AMOS. 



21^ 



power. He is like a stranger from the country asking his 
way through a city. But his questions are rather those of 
indignation than surprise. Thus he sounds on his wild un- 
even path : — •• Can two walk together except they be 
agreed ?" '• Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord 
hath not done it ?" '• The lion hath roared, who will not 
fear V' '' The Lord hath spoken, who can but prophesy V' 
'• Shall horses run upon the rock ?" '• Are ye not as the 
children of Ethiopia unto me, children of Israel ? saith 
the Lord God. 

The imagery of Amos is generally pastoral, and comes 
in, like a cool breeze from Bashan, to temper the ardor of 
his prophetic vein. The bird, the lion from whose mouth 
the shepherd rescues two legs or the piece of an ear, the 
bear meeting the man who has escaped the lion, the kine of 
Bashan, the vineyards where he had often gathered fruit, the 
seven stars and Orion which he had often watched from his 
midnight fields, the ploughman overtaking the reaper, and 
the gatherer of grapes, the sower of seed — proclaim his ori- 
ginal habits and associations. Two of the principal types 
employed are selected from the scenery of the country — the 
grasshoppers, in the 7th. and the basket of summer-fruit, in the 
8th chapter. In like manner, the future prosperity of Israel 
is represented by a rural image. •• I will bring again the 
captivity of my people Israel ; and they shall plant vineyards, 
and drink the wine thereof, and they shall make gardens, and 
eat the fruit of them." 

There are besides, in Amos, certain brief and bold sub- 
limities, which class his genius with that of the best of the 
lesser prophets. Such, in the 9th chapter, is the vision of 
the Lord standing upon the altar, and proclaiming the inex- 
tricable dilemmas into which Israel's cries had led them. In 
all Scripture occur no more powerful antitheses than the 
following : — •• He that fleeth of them shall not flee away ; he 
that escapeth of them shall not escape (into safety). If they 
dig down into Sheol. thence shall mine hand take them. If 
they climb up into heaven, then shall I bring them down. If 
they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search for, 
and thence will I take them out. And if they hide them- 
selves from mine eyes, in the bottom of the sea, thence will 
I command the serpent, and he shall bite them. If they go 
into captivity before their enemies, there will I command the 



2l6 AMOS. 



sword and it shall slay them, and I will set mine eyes upon 
them for evil, and not for good." How the divine omnipresence 
here rolls itself around the victims of the divine anger ! In 
the 139th Psalm, the poet wishes to escape from the Spirit of 
God, as from a thought too strange and overwhelming for 
him ; but here, Israel would seek escape from him, as he 
might from the centre of a forest of fire, but is doomed for 
ever to seek it in vain. An historian has given an animated 
description of the impossibility of escape which beset the steps 
of the fugitive from the power of the Roman Emperor. If 
he crossed the Alps, that power was before him ; if he crossed 
the ocean, it was waiting for him on the shore ; and the tropic 
or the frigid zone was equally unable to hide him from its 
Briarean grasp. Still there remained for him an avenue of 
deliverance. He might plunge into the sea, or turn his 
sword against his own bowels, or pledge his oppressor in 
poison. But for the object of the just vengeance of Jehovah, 
there lay no such way of escape ; he could not thus set his 
foe at defiance. The sea would say, " It is not in me ; " Sheol 
(or Hades) would re-echo the cry ; if he dropt into the arms 
of death, they would but hand him into those of the king of 
terrors ; and if he sought to mount to heaven, this were to 
flee into the metropolis of his foe. Other worlds were barred 
against him ; or even were their barriers broken, this were 
only to take down the palisades which blocked the way of his 
perdition. The Universe was transfigured into a menacing 
shape, fronting the criminal with a face of fire, and stretching 
out on all sides its myriad starry hands, to arrest his retreat, 
or to shed down dismay upon his guilty soul. 

Thus, too, we may, in perfect harmony with the spirit of 
Amos, adumbrate not only the idea of God's personal pre- 
sence, but of the presence of his laws. These, as well as his 
eye, never slumber, and never sleep : they flame on, like 
chariot lamps, through the thickest darkness ; they people 
the remotest solitudes, and the heather bloom which drops 
there, and the little stream which gurgles — the one drops, 
and the other gurgles to their severe melody. The thought 
of this banishes solitude from the creation. " How can I be 
alone, when the Father is with me," and when all the princi- 
ples which regulate suns, are here — on this quaking bog, this 
peak of snow, this crag of ocean ? Nay, these omnipresent 
laws, in their moral form, are found in far drearier and 



AMOS. 



217 



darker places than the dens of serpents or of lions. They 
exist in evil hearts, in polluted consciences, in the abodes of 
uttermost infamy. Innocent as the water and the bread 
which are there, pure as the light which shines there, yet 
terrible as the conscience which often there awakens, do the 
law& of God's moral government there stand, and exercise a 
real, a felt, though a disputed, sovereignty — the dawning of 
their full and final power. " Whither can men go from their 
presence ?" It is not the spirit of earthly law which a great 
writer has so powerfully painted ; it is the spirit of universal 
righteousness which invisibly thus hovers, and quells even 
those who doubt or disbelieve the righteous One. " Ascend 
we heaven, they are are there," for it is these which consti- 
tute our entire knowledge of the stars ; these bind all worlds 
into one ; and he who has adequately ascertained the laws 
of his own fire, has only to blow its flame broader, to deci- 
pher the laws of the " burning, fiery furnace" of the mid- 
night heavens. Ye silent, steadfast, perpetual principles, so 
glow, yet swift — so stern, yet merciful — so low, yet so loud 
in tone — so unassuming, and so omnipotent — so simple in 
your roots, and so complicated in your branches — we might 
fiing paeans and build altars in your worship, were it not that 
we have been taught, ^nd taught specially by those Hebrew 
poets, to see, behind and within you, one living spirit, God 
over all, blessed for ever, your never-failing fountain, your 
ever-open ocean, and have been taught to sing — 

" Father of all, we bow to thee, 
Who dwell'st in heaven adored, 
But present still, through all thy works, 
The universal Lord." 

Amos has had a singular destiny among his fellows. 
Many herdsmen tended cattle in Tekoah, or gathered fruit 
from its sycamore trees, but on him alone lighted the spirit 
of inspiration. It came to him as, like Elisha, he was em- 
ployed in his peaceful toil ; it hurried him to duty and to 
danger ; it made him a power among the moral princes of 
the land ; it gave his name and his prophecy a place in an 
immortal volume ; and from gathering sycamore fruit, it pro- 
moted him to stand below the " tree of life," to pluck from 
it, and to distribute to after ages not a few clusters, as fair 
as they are nutritious, of its celestial fruit. All honor to 



2i8 HOSEA. 



the bold herdsman of Tekoah ! Nor can we close, without 
alluding again to the unhappy poet whose name we coupled 
with his at the beginning — who left the plough, not at the 
voice of a divine, but of an earthly impulse — whose snatches 
of truth, and wisdom, and virtuous sentiment, were neu- 
tralized by counter strains of coarse and ribald debauchery 
— who struggled all his life between light, which amounted 
to noon, and darkness, which was midnight — who tore and 
tarnished with his own hand the garland of beauty he had 
woven for the brow of his native land — whose name, broader 
in his country's literature that that of Amos in his. is 
broadened by the blots which surrounded, as well as by 
the beauties which adorned it — and of whom, much as we 
admire his genius and the many manly qualities of his cha- 
racter, we are prone to say, Pity for his own sake and his 
country's, that he had not tarried '• behind his plough upon 
the mountain-side," for then, if his " glory" had been less, his 
" joy"*had been greater, or, if ruined, he at last had " fallen 
alone in his iniquity." 



HOSEA. 

This prophet seems to have uttered his predictions seven 
or eight hundred years before Christ. He was a son of 
Beeri, and lived in Samaria. He was contemporary with 
Isaiah, and prophesied nearly at the same time with Joel, 
He is '' placed," says an eminent critic, " first among the 
twelve minor prophets, probably because of the peculiarly 
national character which belongs to his oracles." 

Hosea is the first of the prophets who confines his ire 
within the circle of his own country ; not a drop spills be- 
yond. One thought fills his whole soul and prophecy — the 
thought of Israel and Judah's estrangement from God, and 
how they may be restored. This occupies him like a pas- 
sion, and, like all great passions, refuses to be divided. He 
broods, he yearns, his " bowels sound like a harp" over his 
native land. To her, his genius is consecrated " a whole 
burnt-offering" — to her, his domestic happiness is surrendered 
in the unparalleled sacrifice of the first chapter. And how 
his heart tosses to and fro, between stern and soft emotions, 
toward Ephraim, as between conflicting winds ! At one 
time, he is to be as a " lion unto Ephraim j he is to tear, and 



HOSEA. 



219 



to go away ;" but again he cries out — " How shall I give thee 
up, Ephraim ? I will not execute my fierce anger ; I will 
not turn to destroy Ephraim utterly." Indeed, the great 
interest of the book springs from the vibrations of the ba- 
lance in which the nation hangs, rising now high as heaven, 
and now sinking as low as hell, till at last it settles into the 
calm, bright equilibrium in which the last beautiful chapter 
leaves it. The prophecy may be compared to a waterfall 
which tears and bruises its way, amid spray and rainbows, 
through a dark gully, and gains, with difficulty, a placid pool 
at the base, where it sleeps a sleep like the first sleep after 
torture. 

Abruptness characterizes Hosea as well as Amos ; but, 
while in Amos it is the fruit of haste and rural habit, in Ho- 
sea it springs from his impassioned earnestness. He is not 
only full, but choked at times with the fury of the Lord. 
Hence his broken metaphors ; his sentences begun, but never 
ended ; his irregular rhythm ; his peculiar idioms ; the hurry 
with which he leaps from topic to topic, from feeling to feel- 
ing, and from one form of speech to another. The flowers 
he plucks are very beautiful, but seem to be snatched with- 
out selection, and almost without perception of their beauty, 
as he pursues his rapid way. A sublime incoherence distin- 
guishes his prophecy even more than those of the other 
prophets. His passages and sentences have only the unity 
of earnestness, such a unity as the wind gives to the discon- 
nected trees of the forest. From this and his other peculiari- 
ties, arises a great and frequent obscurity. He is like a man 
bursting through a deep wood ; this moment he is lost be- 
hind a tree trunk, and the next he emerges into the open 
space. But, perhaps, none of the prophets has, within the 
same compass, included such a multitude of short, memora- 
ble, and figurative sentences. His coin is minute in size, but 
at once precious and abundant. 

What texts for texts are the following: — " My people are 

destroyed, or cut off for lack of knowledge." " Ephraim is 

joined to idols ; let him alone." '^" 0, Ephraim, what shall I 

do unto thee ? your goodness is as the morning cloud, and as 

the early dew." " Ephraim is a cake not turned." " Gray 

hairs are sprinkled or dispersed upon him, and he knoweth 

it not." " They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the 

whirlwind. As for Samaria, her king is cut off like foam 
IS 



220 HOSEA. 

upon the water." " They shall say so the mountams, Cover 
us, and to the hills, Fall on us." " I drew them with the 
cords of a man, with the bands of love." " I gave them a 
king in mine anger, and I will take him away in my wrath." 
" 0, death, where is thy triumph ? 0, grave, where thy de- 
struction?" "I will be as the dew unto Israel." "What 
hath Ephraim any more to do with idols ?" We see many 
of our readers starting at the sight of those old familiar 
faces, which have so often shone on them in pulpits, and 
from books, but which they have never traced till now to 
Hosea's rugged page. He is, we fear, the least read of all the 
prophets. 

And yet, surely, if the beginning of his prediction some- 
what repel, the close of it should enchain every reader. It 
is the sweetest, roundest, most unexpected, of the prophetic 
perorations. All his woes, warnings, struggles, hard obscuri- 
ties, and harsh ellipses and transitions, are melted down in a 
strain of music, partly pensive, and partly joyous, fresh as 
if it rose from earth, and aerial as if it descended from heav- 
en. The controversies of the book are now ended ; its con- 
tradictions reconciled — the balance sleeps in still light ; Grod 
and his people are at length made one, through the gracious 
medium of pardoning love ; the ornaments lavished on the 
bridal might befit that future and final " bridal of the earth 
and sky," of which it is the type and the pledge ; and the 
music might be that which shall salute the " Lamb's wife." 
Hear a part of it. " I will heal their backslidings, I will 
love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from them. 
I will be as the dew unto Israel. He shall blossom as the 
lily, he shall strike his roots as Lebanon. His branches 
shall spread, his glory shall be as the olive-tree, and his 
smell as Lebanon. They that sit under his shadow shall re- 
turn ; they shall revive as corn ; they shall break forth as 
the vine ; the scent thereof shall be as the vine of Le- 
banon." 

Softest of all droppings, are the last droppings from a 
thundercloud, which the sun has brightened, and the rain- 
bow bound. Smoothest of all leaves, are the " high leaves " 
upon the holly-tree. And soft and smooth as these drop- 
pings and leaves, are the last words of the stern Hosea, whom 
otherwise we might have called a half Ezekiel, possessing his 
passion and vehemence; while Zechariah shall reflect the 




WOMEN OP ISRAEL MEETING SAUL. 



JOEL. 



223 



shadowy portion of his orb, and be nearly as mystic, typical, 
and unsearchable in manner and in meaning, as the son of 
Buzi. 

JOEL 

Stands fourth in the catalogue of the minor bards. Nothing 
whatever is known of him, except that he seems to have been 
of the tribe of Judah, and that he prophesied between seven 
and eight hundred years before Christ. 

Grloomy grandeur is this bard's style ; desolation, mourn- 
ing, and woe, are the substance of his prophecy. Its hero is 
the locust, winging his way to the fields predestined for his 
ravages. We can suppose Joel, the pale yet bold rider of 
one of those shapes in the Revelations, " Locusts like unto 
horses prepared unto battle ; on their heads crowns of gold, 
their faces as the faces of men, their hair as the hair of 
women, their teeth as the teeth of lions, with breastplates 
of iron, and the sound of their wings as the sound of many 
horses and chariots running to battle." And hark ! how he 
spurs, instead of restraining, his terrible courser, crying out, 
" The day of Jehovah cometh ; it is near. A day of dark- 
ness and of gloominess, a day of cloud and of thick darkness. 
As the dusk before the dawn spread upon the mountains, 
cometh a great people and a strong ; there hath never been 
the like of old, nor shall be any more for ever. A fire 
devoureth before them, and behind a flame consumeth ; 
the land before them is as the G-arden of Eden, and 
behind them a desolate wilderness ; yea, and nothing shall 
escape them." So black and broad, as if cast from the 
shadow of a fallen angel's wings, is the ruin predicted by 
Joel. 

These locusts have a king and a leader, and, in daring 
consistency with his own and his country's genius, he con- 
stitutes that leader the Lord. They are his " great camp," 
his '• army," they march at his command straight forward ; 
with them he darkens the face of the earth, and with them, 
" warping on the eastern wind," he bedims the sun and the 
stars. These innumerous, incessant, and irresistible insects, 
form the lowest, but not the least terrible of those incarna- 
tions of G-od, which the imagination of the Jew delighted to 
create and the song of the prophet to describe. Now^ the 
philosopher seldom personifies even the universe ; 'tis but a 



224 



JOEL. 



great and glorious It ; but then, each beautiful, or dire, or 
strange shape passing over the earth, or through the 
heavens — the shower, the rainbow, the whirlwind, the locust- 
troop, the mildew, the blight — was God's movable tent, the 
place where, for a season, his honor, his beauty, his strength, 
and his justice dwelt, the tenant not degraded, and inconceiv- 
able dignity being added to the abode. 

Promises of physical plenty alternate, in Joel, with 
threatenings of physical destruction. And rich are the 
years of plenty which he predicts to succeed those of famine. 
" ye children of Zion, be glad in Jehovah your God ; for 
he giveth you the former rain in measure, and will cause the 
former and the latter rain to come down on you as afore- 
time. And the floor shall be full of wheat, and the vats 
shall overflow with wine and oil. And I will restore to you 
the years which the locusts have eaten — my great army 
which I have sent unto you. And ye shall eat in plenty, 
and be satisfied ; and shall praise the name of Jehovah your 
God." Such smooth and lovely strains seem less congenial, 
however, to Joel's genius than is the progress of the destroy- 
ers. Into that he throws his whole soul. The " sheaf" of 
plenty he bears artistically and well ; but he becomes the 
" locust," as he leads him forth to his dark and silent battle. 

But there are still nobler passages than this in Joel's 
prophecy. As the blackness of a cloud of doom to that of a 
swarm of locusts, is Joel's description of the one to his de- 
scription of the other. There are two or three passages in 
his prophecy which, like the dove of the deluge, " can find 
no rest for the sole of their feet," till they reach the cliff's of 
final judgment. Touch, indeed, one does, for a moment, 
upon the roof of that " one place," where Peter, inflamed 
beneath the fiery Pentecost, is preaching to the disciples ; but 
ere the speaker has closed, he has risen and soared away to- 
ward a higher house, and a far distant age. Another and 
fuller accomplishment there must be for the words, " I will 
show wonders in the heavens, and in the earth, blood, and 
fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into 
darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and ter- 
rible day of Jehovah come." Nothing, save the great last 
day, can fill up the entire sphere of this description. That 
there is what we may call a strange and mysterious sympathy 
between the various lines of the divine procedure — that when 



JOEL 



225 



God's providence smiles, his works in nature often return 
smile for smile — and that when his moral procedure is frown- 
ing, his material framework becomes cloudy, threatening, and 
abnormal, too, seems proved by facts, as well as consistent 
with the dictates of true philosophy ; for although there be 
those who stand cowering helow such singular correspondences 
with the vulgar, and those who stand above them, like angelic 
creatures, and those who stand apart from them, as they do 
from all strange and beautiful phenomena, like the minions 
of mathematics and the slaves to a shallow logic, there may 
be those who can stand on their level and heside them, and 
see all Grod's works reflecting, and hear them responding to, 
and feel them sympathizing with, each other. And that, 
when Grod shall close our present economy, and introduce 
his nobler and his last, this may be announced in the aspects 
of nature, as well as of society — that the heaven may blush, 
and the earth tremble, before the face of their king — that 
there shall be visible signs and wonders — seems at once phi- 
losophically likely, and Scripturally certain. An earthquake 
shook the cross, darkness bathed the brow of the crucified, 
the rocks were rent, and the graves were opened. Jerusa- 
lem, ere its fall, was not only compassed, but canopied, with 
armies. A little time before the French Revolution there 
is peace on earth ; is there peace in heaven? No ; night after 
night, the sky is bathed in blood — blood finding a fearful 
comment in the wars which followed, in which France alone 
counted her five millions of slain — a *' sign of the times," 
which did not escape the eye of Cowper, as his " Task" tes- 
tifies. Since then, once and again, pestilence and civil con- 
vulsion have danced down together their dance of death, and 
their ball-room has been lighted up by meteors, which science 
knew not, nor could explain. But what imagination can 
conceive of those appearances which shall precede or accom- 
pany the coming of God's Son, and the establishment of his 
kingdom ? Let the pictures, by Joel, by John, and, at a far 
off distance, by Pollok, remain as alone approximating to the 
sublimity of those rehearsals of doom. Be it that they are 
from the pencils of poets, surely poets are fitting heralds to 
proclaim the rising of those two new poems of Q-od — the 
New Heaven, and the New Earth ; and is not the language 
of one of themselves as true as it is striking— 



2 26 JOEL. 

'' A terrible sagacity informs 
The poet's heart, he looks to distant storms, 
He hears the thunder, ere the tempest lowers." 

A kindred event in the future lies obscurely upon Joel's 
page. It is the "Last conflict of great principles." That 
this is the burden of the 3d chapter, it seems difficult to 
deny. Through its fluctuating mist, there is dim-discovered 
the outline of a battle-field, where a cause — the cause of the 
world — is to be fought, fought finally, and to the watchword, 
" Victory or death." Nothing can be more magnificent than 
the picture, colored though it be by Jewish associations and 
images. The object of the fight is the restoration of Judah 
to its former freedom and power. For this, have its scat- 
tered members been gathered, organized, and brought back 
to their own land. God has gathered them, but he has also, 
for purposes of his own, to use prophetic language, "hissed" 
for their enemies, from all nations, to oppose them on the 
threshold of their triumph. The valley of decision or ex- 
cision is that of Jehoshaphat, the deep glen lying between 
Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, and which is watered 
by the brook Kedron. There "multitudes, multitudes," are 
convened for the final issue. The field has been darkened, 
and over those multitudes a canopy expands, unlighted by 
sun, moon, or stars. Under this black sky, the sea of heathen 
fury and numbers is advancing, and the people of God are, 
in deep suspense and silence, awaiting its first breaking bil- 
low. The contest at last begins, when lo ! there is a glare 
on Olivet, which shows also the whole expanse of Jehoshaphat's 
valley, and also the faces of the foemen, as they draw nigh ; 
and hark! there is a voice from Zion which shakes earth and 
heaven, and tells that the delivery is near ; and then, between 
Olivet and Jerusalem, and hanging high over the narrow 
vale, appears the Lord himself, " The hope of his people, and 
the stronghold of the children of Israel." And as the result 
of this sudden intervention, when the fight is decided, " The 
mountains drop down sweet wine, the hills flow with milk, 
the torrents of Judah flow with water, a fountain comes forth 
from the House of Jehovah, and waters the valley of Shit- 
tim," and innumerable voices proclaim that henceforth the 
" Lord will dwell in," as he has delivered, Zion. 

Was there ever preparation on a larger scale ; suspense 
deeper ; deliverance more sudden ; or a catastrophe more sub- 



MICAH. 



227 



lime ? We stay not now critically to inquir^i how much there 
is of what is literal, and how much of what is metaphorical, 
in this description. To tell accurately where, in prophetic 
language, the metaphor falls from around the fact, and the 
fact pierces the bud of the metaphor, is one of the most diffi- 
cult of tasks ; as difficult, almost, as to settle the border line 
between the body and the soul. But, apart from this, we 
think there is no candid reader of the close of Joel, but must 
be impressed with the reality of the contest recorded there, 
with its modern date, its awful breadth of field, its momen- 
tous and final character. It is, in all the extent of the words, 
that war of opinion so often partially predicted and partially 
fought. It is a contest between the real followers of Christ, 
put of every kindred, denomination, tongue, and people, and 
the open enemies and the pretended friends of his cause. It 
is a contest of which the materials are already being collect- 
ed. It is a contest which, as it hurtles on, shall probably 
shake all churches to their foundations, and give a new and 
strange arrangement to all parties. It is a contest for which 
intelligent men and Christians should be preparing, not by 
shutting themselves up within the fastnesses of party, nor by 
strengthening more strongly the stakes of a bygone implicit 
narrowness of creed, but by the exercise of a wise liberality, 
a cautious circumspection, and a manly courage, blended with 
candor, and by being prepared to sacrifice many an outpost, 
and relinquish many a false front of battle, provided they 
can save the citadel, and keep the banner of the cross flying, 
free and safe above it. It is a contest which may, in all 
probability, become at last more or less literal, as when did 
any great war of mind fail to dye its garments in blood ? It 
is a contest of whose where and when we may not speak, 
since the strongest prophetic breath has not raised the mists 
which overhang the plain of Armageddon. It is a contest, 
finally, which promises to issue in a supernatural interven- 
tion, and over the smoke of its bloody and desperate battle- 
field, to show the crown of the coming of the Son of Man. 

MICAH. 

He is called the Morasthite, because born in Mareshah, a 
village in the south of the territory of Judah. He prophesied 
during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. We find 



2 28 MIC AH. 



a remarkable allusion to him in the book of Jeremiah. That 
prophet had predicted the utter desolation of the temple and 
city of Jerusalem, The priests and prophets thereupon ac- 
cused him to the princes and the people, as worthy to die, 
because he had prophesied against the city. The threat is 
about to be put in execution, when some of the elders rise 
up and adduce the case of Micah. " Micah, the Morasthite, 
prophesied in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, saying, 
Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Zion shall be ploughed like a 
field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain 
of the house as the high places of the forest. Did Hezekiah, 
king of Judah, and all Judah, put him at all to death 1 did 
he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord 
repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against 
them 1 Thus might we procure great evil against our souls." 
Micah was plead as a precedent, nor was he plead in vain. 

This prophet is noted principally for the condensation of 
his language, the rapidity of his transitions, the force and 
brevity of his pictures, the form of dialogue to which he often 
approaches, and for two or three splendid passages which 
tower above the rest of his prophecy, like cedars among the 
meaner trees. One of these records the sudden gleam of 
insight which showed him, in the future, Bethlehem-Ephra- 
tah sending out its illustrious progeny, one whose goings 
forth had been from of old, from the " Eternal obscure." 
How lovely those streams of prophetic illumination, which 
fall from afar, like autumn sunshine upon secret and lonely 
spots, and crown them with a glory unknown to themselves ! 
Bethlehem becomes beautiful beyond itself, in the lustre of 
the Saviour's rising. Another, for moral grandeur, is almost 
unequalled in Scripture, and sounds like the knell of the 
ceremonial economy. " Wherewith shall I come before Jeho- 
vah, and bow myself before the Most High God ? Shall I 
come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? 
Will Jehovah be well pleased with thousands of rams, with 
ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born for 
my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? 
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good. And what doth 
Jehovah require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with thy God ?" Here the burden of 
the 50th Psalm is uttered more sententiously, although not 
with such awful accompaniments. Both announce the pros- 



MIC AH. 



231 



pective arrival of a period, when the husk of type and statu- 
tory observance was to drop from around the fruit it had 
protected and concealed, when equity was to outsoar law, 
mercy to rejoice over sacrifice, and humility to take the room 
of ceremonial holiness — when that " which had decayed and 
waxed old was to vanish away." 

In this liberal spirit, as well as in certain passages of Mi- 
cah's prophecy, we descry the influence of the great orb 
which appeared above the horizon at the same time — Isaiah. 
The close of the 7th chapter is almost identical with a pas- 
sage in Isaiah; but the main coincidence occurs in the 4th 
chapter. Critics have doubted whether the opening of this 
was copied by Isaiah from Micah, or by Micah from the 2d 
chapter of Isaiah ; or whether it were communicated by the 
Spirit separately to both. This is a matter of little mo- 
ment; certainly the strain itself was worthy of repetition. 

It is a vision of the future glories of the Church. The 
prophet finds an emblem of it in Mount Sion, or the mountain 
of the temple of the Lord. This was not remarkable for 
height. Far loftier mountains arose throughout Palestine. 
There were the mountains which stand alway about Jerusa- 
lem. There was Salmon, with its perpetual snow. There 
were the mountains of Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan, 
who had been lovely in their lives, in their death were not 
divided. There was Carmel, shadowing the waters of the 
west, and covered, to its summit, with a robe of undying 
green. There was Tabor, rising, like an island, from the 
plain of Esdraelon, which lies like an ocean around it. And 
in the north, stood the great form of Lebanon, rising above 
the clouds, and covered with the cedars of God — 

" Whose head in wintry grandeur towers, 
And whitens with eternal sleet; 
While summer in a vale of flowers, 
Is smiling rosy at his feet." 

Compared to these and others. Mount Sion was but a little 
hill — a mere dot on the surface of the globe. But dearer it 
was than any or all of them to Micah's heart. And why ? 
because it was the mountain of the Lord's house. No tem- 
ple stood on Tabor ; no incense streamed from Carmel ; to 
Lebanon no tribes went up, nor sacrifices ascended from its 
cedarn summits. Sion alone represented the position of the 



232 



MICAH. 



Churcli — not to be compared in magnificence or in multitude 
of votaries with other systems, but possessing, in the pres- 
ence of the Spirit of the Lord, a principle of divine life and 
an element of everlasting progress. 

But the prophet has now a " vision of his own." Sion in 
his dream, begins to stir, to move, to rise. It first surmounts 
the hills which are around Jerusalem ; then rises higher 
than Carmel, that solitary mountain of the west ; then over- 
tops Tabor ; and springs up, at last, as far above Lebanon as 
Lebanon was above the meaner hills of the land. It is es- 
tablished on the top of the mountains, and exalted above the 
hills, and up to it he sees flocking all nations. It has be- 
come the centre of the world. It gives law to every people 
and tongue. The Lord himself sits in the midst of it, dis- 
tributing justice impartially to all near and far oS. And 
around and within the shadow of his universal throne, the 
prophet beholds many hammering their swords into plough- 
shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks — others sitting 
below their vine and fig-tree — and all calm, peaceful, and 
happy, under the solitary sceptre of Jehovah. 

Thus shaped itself on Micah's eye a prospect which must 
yet be transferred from his to the broad page of the world. 
Like Sion, the Church is, in one view, very small, Hindoos 
and Chinese speak of her as a low heresy, creeping about the 
mountains and marshes of Europe ; and contrast her with 
their ancient and colossal establishments. Jews and Ma- 
hometans deride her, as cemented by the blood of him that 
was crucified. And in one sense they are right in so judg- 
ing ; in another, they are fearfully mistaken. Christianity is 
nothing, except that it is divine — nothing, except that it 
comes from heaven — nothing, except that it is to cover the 
whole earth with its power and its praise. The arm of a 
prophet was just like any other human arm ; it possessed 
precisely the same number of bones, sinews, muscles, and 
veins. And yet, when raised to heaven, when electrified 
from above, it could divide the sea, raise the dead, and bring 
down fire from the clouds. So the true Church of Christ is 
lust an assemblage of simple, humble, sincere men — that is 
all ; but the Lord is on their side, and there we discern a 
source of energy, which shall yet shatter thrones, change the 
destiny of nations, and uplift, with resistless force, the moun- 
tain of the Lord's house above the mountains and above the 
hiUs. 



micah: 



233 



This despised and struggling Church shall yet become 
universal. " All nations shall flow unto it." Those who 
wander on the boundless steppes of Tartarj — those who 
shiver amid the eternal ice of Greenland — rthose who inhabit 
Africa, that continent of thirst — those who bask in the lovely 
regions of the South Sea — all, all are to flow to the mountain 
of the Lord. They are to " flow ;" they are to come, not in 
drops, but with the rush and the thunder of mighty streams. 
^ Nations are to be born in one day." A supernatural impulse 
is to be given to the Christian cause. Christ is again to be, 
as before, his own missionary. Blessed are the eyes which 
shall see this great gathering of the nations, and the ears 
which shall hear the sound thereof Blessed above those 
born of women, especially, the devoted men, who, after labor- 
ing in the field of the world, shall be rewarded, and at the 
same time astonished, by finding its harvest-home hastened, 
and the work which they had been pursuing, with strong 
crying and tears, done to their hands, done completely, and 
done from heaven. In tMs belief lies the hope and the help 
of the world. But for a divine intervention, we despair of 
the success of the good cause. Allow us this, and Chris- 
tianity is sure of a triumph, as speedy as it shall be univer- 
sal. On Sabbath, the 16th of May, 1836, we saw the sun 
seized, on the very apex of his glory, as if by a black hand, 
and so darkened that only a thin round ring of light re- 
mained visible, and the chill of twilight came prematurely 
on. That mass of darkness within seemed the world lying 
in wickedness, and that thin round ring of light, the present 
progress of the Grospel in it. But not more certain were we 
then, that that thin round ring of light was yet to become 
the broad and blazing sun, than are we now, that through a 
divine interposal, but not otherwise, shall the " knowledge of 
the glory of the Lord cover the earth as the waters the sea." 
With this coincides Micah's prophecy. From Sion, as of 
old, the law is to go forth ; and the word of Jehovah issuing 
from Jerusalem seems to imply, that he himself is there to 
sit and judge and reign — his ancient oracle resuming its 
thunders, and again to his feet the tribes going up. And 
the first, and one of the best fruits of his dominion is peace. 
" They learn war no more." Castles are dismantled, men of 
war plough the deep no longer, but are supplanted by the 
white sails of merchant vessels ; soldiers no more parade 



234 



NAHITM. 



the streets in their loathsome finery of blood ; swords and 
spears are changed into instruments of husbandry, or, if pre- 
served, are preserved in exhibitions, as monuments of the 
past folly and frenzy of mankind. (Perhaps a child finds 
the fragment of a rusty blade some day in a field, brings it 
in to his mother, asks her what it is, and the mother is una- 
ble to reply !) Peace, the cherub, waves her white wing, 
and murmurs her soft song of dovelike joy over a regene- 
rated and united world. 

All hail ye "peaceful years!" Swift be your approach; 
soon may your great harbinger divide his clouds and come 
down ; and soon may the inhabitants of a warless world have 
difficulty in crediting the records which tell the wretchedness, 
the dispeace, the selfishness, and the madness of the past. 

NAHUM. 

Nahum was a native of Elkoshai, a village of Galilee, the 
ruins of which are said to have been distinctly visible in the 
fourth century. 

Nahuili's prophecy is not much longer than his history. 
It is the most magnificent shout ever uttered. Like a shout, 
it is short, but strong as the shout which brought down Jeri- 
cho. The prophet stands — a century after Jonah — without 
the wall of Nineveh, and utters, in fierce and hasty language, 
his proclamation of its coming doom. No pause interrupts 
it ; there is no change in its tone ; it is a stern, one, war-cry, 
and comes swelled by the echoes of the past. Nahum is an 
evening wolf, from the Lord, smelling the blood of the great 
city, and uttering a fearful and prolonged note — half of woe, 
and half of joy, which is softened by distance into music. 
How wondrous that one song should have survived such a 
city ! 

In a shout, you expect nothing but strength, monotony, 
and loudness. But Nahum's is the "shout of a king ;" not 
merely majestical in tone, but rises, with splendid imagery 
and description. Nineveh must fall to regal music. It must 
go down amid pomp and poetry. Especially does the pro- 
phet kindle, as he pictures the pride, pomp, and circum- 
stance ot war. Tyrtaeus and Korner, nay, Macaulay and 
Scott, are fainthearted on the field of battle, compared to 
Nahum. Ho strikes his lyre with fingers dipped in blood. 



ZEPHANIAH. 



235 



In him, 11 prophetic blends with a martial fire, like a stray 
sunbeam crowning and hallowing a conflagration. Hear Ni- 
neveh shaking in the breath of his terrible outcry — " Woe to 
the city of blood ! She is all full of falsehood and violence. 
The prey departeth not. There is a sound of the whip, and 
a sound of the rattling wheels, and of the prancing horses, 
and of the bounding chariots, and of the mounting horsemen. 
There, too, burns the flame of the sword, and the lightning 
of the spear, and a multitude of slain, and a heap of dead 
bodies, and there is no end to the carcasses — they stumble 
upon carcasses." 

Nahum's prophecy possesses one poetical quality in per- 
fection. That is concentration. He has but one object, one 
thought, one spirit, one tone. His book gathers like a " wall 
of fire" around the devoted city. He himself may be fitliest 
likened to that wild and naked prophet, who ran an incessant 
and narrowing circle about Jerusalem, and who, as he traced 
the invisible furrow of destruction around it, cried out, " Woe, 
woe, woe, till he sank down in death ! 

ZEPHANIAH. 

His genealogy is more minutely marked than that of any 
of his brethren. He is the " son of Cushi, the son of Geda- 
liah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah." While his 
genealogy is thus carefully preserved, none of the facts of 
his life are given We know only that he was called to pro- 
phesy in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, the King of 
Judah. He was contemporary with Jeremiah, and, like him, 
" zealous to slaying" against the idols and idolatrous practices 
of his country. 

Zephaniah is less distinguished than some of his brethren 
for any marked or prominent quality. He is not abrupt, 
like Hosea, gloomily-grand, like Joel, majestic, like Micah, 
impetuous, like Amos, or concentrated, like Nahum ; he is 
rather a composite of many qualities, and a miniature of 
many prophetic writers. We have vehement denunciation 
of the sins of his own people ; we have the dooms of idola- 
trous nations pronounced with all the force and fury of his 
office ; we have pictures, startling for life and minuteness, of 
the varied classes and orders of ofi'enders in Jerusalem — 
princes, judges, prophets, and priests ; and we have bright 
16 



236 



ZEPHANIAH. 



promises, closing and crowning the whole. All these are 
uttered in a brief, but impressive and solemn style. 

But why, is it asked, do these Hebrew prophets utter such 
terrible curses against heathen countries? Are they not 
harsh in themselves, and do they not augur a vindictive 
spirit on the part of their authors ? We ask, in reply, first^ 
were not those curses fulfilled? Were they uttered in im- 
potent fury? Did they recoil upon the heads of those who 
uttered them ? Did those ravens croak in vain ? If not, is 
it not to be inferred that the rage they expressed was not 
their own ; that they were, in a great measure, as ravens 
were supposed to be, instruments of a higher power, dark 
with the shadow of destiny ? Evil wishes are proverbially 
powerless ; the "threatened live long" — curses, like chickens, 
come home to roost. But their curses — the ruins of empires 
are smoking with them still. But, secondly, even if we grant 
that human emotions did to some extent mingle with those 
prophetic denunciations, yet these were by no means of a 
personal kind. Of what ofi"ence to Ezekiel had Tyre, ox to 
Isaiah had Babylon, been guilty ? Their fire was kindled 
on general and patriotic grounds. Thirdly, Let us remember 
that the prophets employed the language of poetry, which is 
always in some degree that of exaggeration. Righteous in- 
dignation, when set to music, and floated on the breath of 
song, must assume a higher and harsher tone ; must ferment 
into fury, soar into hyperbolical invective, or, if it sink, sink 
into the under-tone of irony, and yet remain righteous indig- 
nation still. Fourthly, As Coleridge has shown so well, to 
fuse indignation into poetic form, serves to carry off what- 
ever of over-violence there had been in it : by aggravating, 
it relieves and lessens its fury. Fifthly, There is such a 
thing as noble rage ; there are those who do well to be angry; 
there is anger which may lawfully tarry after the sun has 
gone down, and after the longest twilight has melted away ; 
there is a severe and purged fire, not to feel which implies as 
deep a woe, to the subject, as to feel it inflicts upon the object. 
It is the sickly sentimentalism of a girl which shudders at 
such glorious frowns and fierce glances and deep thrilling ac- 
cents, as robust virtue must sometimes use to quell vice, and 
audacity, and heartlessness, and hypocrisy, in a world rank 
with them all. There must be other sentences and songs at 
times than the perfumed pages of albums will endure, and 



HABAKKUK. 239 



cries may require to be raised which would jar on the ear of 
evening drawing-rooms. Such sentences and cries the mildest 
of men, nay, superhuman beings, have been forced to utter. 
Can any one wonder at Ezekiel's burdens, who has read the 
23d chapter of Matthew ? Dare any one accuse Isaiah of 
vindictive scorn to the fallen King of Babylon, who remem- 
bers the divine laughter described in the 2d Psalm, or the 
1st chapter of Proverbs? It is very idle to proceed with 
Watts to reduce to a weak dilution the sterner Psalms. The 
spirit of Jude and 2d Peter is essentially the same with that 
of the 109th and 137th Psalms: and never be it forgotten, 
that the most fearful denunciations of sin, and pictures of 
future punishment in Scripture, come from the lips of Jesus 
and of the disciple whom he loved. It is in the New Testa- 
ment, not the Old, that that sentence of direst and deepest 
import occurs, " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of 
the living Grod." 

Were, indeed^ the theory of the Germans true, that those 
prophetic curses were uttered after the events predicted, we 
should surrender them more readily to their censure, although, 
even in this case, there had been numerous palliations to 
plead for the prolonged exultation of a delivered race over 
foes so oppressive and formidable. But believing that 
Isaiah's burden of Babylon is of a somewhat different order 
from the prophecy of Capys, and that all the Scripture pre- 
dictions implied foresight, and were the shadows of coming 
events, we are not disposed to gratify the skeptic by granting 
that one spark of infernal fire shone on those flaming altars 
of imprecation, although a shade of human feeling was per- 
haps inseparable from the bosoms of the priests, however 
purged and clean, who ministered around them. 

HABAKKUK. 

This man, too, is but a name prefixed to a rapt psalm. 
He lived in the reign of Jehoiakim ; was, of course, contem- 
porary with Jeremiah ; and it is generally supposed that he 
remained in Judah, and died there. Rugged, too, is his name, 
and cacophonous, nay, of cacophony often used as the type. 
Yet this name has been carved in bold characters upon the 
bark of the " Tree of life," and will remain there for ever. 
Kough as it is, it was the name of a noble spirit, and has, 



240 



HABAKKUK. 



moreover, a fine signification — " one that embraces." Em- 
braces what ? Does not his daring genius seem stretching 
out arms to " embrace" those horns of light, which are the 
" hiding of Jehovah's power ?" These are the horns of the 
altar to which Habakkuk must cling ! 

His power seems as limited as lofty. His prophecy is a 
Pompey's Pillar — tall, narrow, and insulated. It begins 
abruptly, like an arm suddenly shot up in prayer. " How 
long, Jehovah, have I cried, and thou hast not hearkened ! 
"Why dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold 
grievance ? for spoiling and violence are before me, and there 
are that raise up strife and contention." Yet this reluctance 
to describe the frightful scenes he foresaw, is but the trem- 
bling vibration of the javelin ere it is launched, the hesita- 
tion of the accusing orator ere his speech has fully begun, 
the convulsive flutter of the lightning ere the bolt be sped. 
Over the heads of the transgressors of his people, he speedily 
lifts up three words, which express all that follows — Behold, 
Wonder, Perish — words very suitable, in their fewness, to 
herald the coming of the Chaldeans, that " bitter and hasty 
nation," who were swift as the leopard, and fierce as the 
evening wolf, as well as characteristic of the ardent soul of 
this prophet, who sees the flower before the bud, and finds 
out the crime by the torch of the punishment. How he 
catches and sets before us the rapid progress of the Chal- 
deans ! Come like shadows they may, but they da not so 
depart. Yielding like wax to receive, he like marble retains 
their image and tread. " Their judgment and their excel- 
lency proceed from themselves." They have — that is lately 
— revolted from the Assyrian yoke ; they are newly let 
loose ; the greater the danger of their prisoners. " Their 
faces sup up as the east wind." No livelier image of desola- 
tion can be given. " They shall gather up captives as the 
sand," as the east wind lifts and drifts the sands before it. 
Thus, like " reapers descend to the harvest of death" the 
foemen, fermenting the "vision which Habakkuk the pro- 
phet did see." 

Chapter first contains the vision, chapter second the accu- 
sation, and chapter third the song, or, as Ewald calls it, the 
Dithyrambic. These are the beginning, middle, and end of 
the prophecy. The accusation breaks into a succession of 
woes, like large electric drops. " Woe unto him that coveteth 



HABAKKUK. 



241 



an evil covetousness for his house. Surely the stone from 
the wall crieth out, and the beam from the timber answereth, 
woe, woe to him that buildeth a town by blood, and establisheth 
a city by iniquity." Probably the woe, thus fearfully ventri- 
loquized from wall and wood, pertains to the King of Baby- 
lon. But those that follow light on his own land. " Woe to 
him that maketh his neighbor drink " " Woe to him that saith 
to the wood, Awake, to the silent stone, Arise, it shall teach ! 
" Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, neither is there 
any breath in the midst thereof" But he cannot tarry 
longer pouring forth such preliminary drops, for the Lord 
himself is about to speak,-in the full accents of his ire, and to 
come in all the majesty of his justice. 

How solemn the stillness of the expectation produced by 
the closing words of the second chapter, " But Jehovah is in 
his holy temple. Be silent before him all the earth." As 
in summer the still red evening in the west predicts the 
burning m'brrow, do those sublimely simple, and terribly 
tame words, announce that the ode, on its wide wings of sha- 
dowy fire, is at hand. 

Amidst the scenery of Sinai, there was heard at the crisis 
of the terror, a trumpet waxing gradually very loud, giving a 
martial tone to the tumult, drawing its vague awfulness into 
a point of war, and proclaiming the presence of the Lord of 
Hosts. Could we conceive that trumpet to have been utter- 
ing words, descriptive of the scene around, they had been the 
words of Habakkuk's song. " God came from Teman, the 
Holy One from Paran ; his glory covered the heavens, and 
the earth was full of his praise." 

But the description is not of Sinai alone, nor, indeed, of 
any single scene. It is a picture of the divine progress or 
pilgrimage throughout the Jewish economy, formed by com- 
bining all the grand symbols of his power and presence into 
one tumult of glory. It were difficult for a thunderstorm to 
march calmly and regularly. There must be ragged edges 
in the darkness, and wild flashes and fluctuations in the 
light ; and so with Habakkuk's song. Its brightness is 
as the sun's ; but there is a hiding or veil over its might. 
Its figures totter in sympathy with the trembling moun- 
tains it describes. Its language bows before its thoughts, 
like the everlasting mountains below the footsteps of. 
Jehovah. 



242 



HABAKKUK. 



Where begins this procession? In the wilderness of 
Paran. There, where still rise the three tower-like summits 
of Mount Paran, which, when gilded by the evening or 
morning sun, look like " horns of glory," the great pilgrim 
begins his progress. How is he attired ? It is in a garment 
woven of the " marvellous light and the thick darkness." 
Rays, as of the morning sun, shoot out from his hand. 
These are at once the horns and the hidings of his power. 
Like a dark raveiv flies before him the plague. Wherever 
his feet rest, flashes of fire (or birds of prey !) arise. He 
stands, and the earth moves. He looks through the clouds 
which veil him, and the nations are scattered. As he ad- 
vances, the mountains bow. Paran begins the homage; 
Sinai succeeds ; the giants of Seir, and Moab, and Bashan 
fall prostrate — till every ridge and every summit has felt the 
awe of his presence. On still he goes, and lo ! how the 
tents of Cushan are uncovered, undone, removed, and their 
wandering inhabitants vanish away ; and how the curtains of 
the land of Midian do tremble, as he passes by. But have 
even the waters perceived him ? Is he angry at the rivers ? 
Has he breathed on them too ? Yea, verily ; and Jordan 
stands aside to let him through dry-shod into Canaan's land. 
And once entered there, the hills imitate the terror of tneir 
eastern brethren, and fall a trembling ; and the deeps of 
Galilee's sea and the Mediterranean utter their voice ; and 
the heights, from Olivet to Lebanon, lift up their hands 
in wonder ; and, as his arrows fly abroad, and his spear glit- 
ters, the sun stands still over Gibeon, and the moon over the 
valley of Ajalon. Nor does the Awful Pilgrim repose till 
he has trampled on the nations of Canaan as he had on the 
mountains of the east, and till over their bruised heads and 
weltering carcasses he has brouglit aid to his people and sal- 
vation to his anointed. 

This analysis, after all, fails to convey the rapid accumu- 
lation of metaphor, the heaving struggle of words, the bold- 
ness of spirit, and the crowded splendors of this matchless 
picture. Indeed, almost all the brighter and bolder images 
of Old Testament poetry are to be found massed up in this 
single strain. Chronology, geography, every thing, must 
yield to the purpose of the poet ; which is, in every possible 
way, to do justice to his theme, in piling glory on glory 
around the march of God. Thus he dares to remove the 



OBADIAH. 



243 



Red Sea itself, and throw it into the path between Paran 
and Palestine, that the Deity may pass more triumphantly 
on. 

Yet the modesty is not inferior to the boldness of the 
song. Habakkuk had begun intending to describe a future 
coming of God, and, to fire himself for the eflfort, had called 
up the glories of the past. But after describing these, he 
stops short, allowing us only to infer from the former what 
the future must be. Exhausted and reeling under the per- 
ception of that overpowering picture, he dares not image to 
himself the tremendous secrets of the future. He says only, 
" Though my country should come to utter desolation, the 
vines give no fruit, the fields yield no bread, the flock be cut 
off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stall, yet I will 
rejoice in the Lord, nay, exult in the Grod of my salvation. 
He will make me to leap as the hart, even though my feet, 
like Grod's own, should leap on naked crags, and tread on high 
places, though they should be those of scathed and sterile 
desolation." 

Beautiful the spirit of Habakkuk, and expressing in 
another form the grand conclusion of Job, and of all earnest 
and reconciled spirits. A God so great must be good ; and 
he who hath done things in the past so mighty and terrible, 
yet in their effect so gracious, may be well expected, and ex- 
pected with exultation, to pursue his own path, however in- 
scrutable, to the ultimate good of his world, and Church, 
and often to " express his answer to our prayers," as in the 
days of old, by works as " fearful" as magnificent. 



OBADIAH. 

There are no less than twelve persons of this name men- 
tioned in Scripture. The most distinguished of them is the 
Obadiah who saved a hundred of God's prophets, by hiding 
them in a cave, during a time of scarcity and persecution. 
Some suppose that he was the prophet before us, although 
others deem him to have flourished at a much later date — at 
the same period with Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 

He seems to have prophesied in the short interval between 
the destruction of Jerusalem and that of Edom. His pro- 
phecy, which is but a fragment, consists principally of pre- 
dictions of the judgments impending over Edom, and of the 



244 HAGGAI. 



restoration and prosperity of the Jews. There are remark- 
able coincidences between Obadiah and the 49th chapter of 
Jeremiah. 

A single chapter, which, like this of Obadiah. has sur- 
vived ages, empires, and religions, must be strongly stamped 
either with peculiarity or with power. It must have some 
inextinguishable principle of vitality. Apart from its inspi- 
ration, it survives, as the most memorable rebuke to fraternal 
hardness of heart. It is a brand on the brow of that second 
Cain, Esau. Hear its words, stern in truth, yet plaintive 
in feeling, " For slaughter, and for oppression of thy brother 
Jacob, shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut oif for 
ever. In the day when thou stoodest on the other side, in 
the day when strangers carried away captive his forces, and 
when foreigners entered his gates, and when they cast lots 
on Jerusalem, tlum also wast as one of tliem. But thou 
shouldest not have so looked on the day of thy brother, on 
the day when he became a stranger, nor have rejoiced over 
the sons of Judah in the day when they were destroyed, nor 
have magnified thy words in the day of distress. Thou 
shouldest not have entered into the gate of my people in the 
day of their calamity, nor have so looked on his affliction in 
the day of his calamity, nor have put forth thine hand on his 
substance in the day of his calamity, nor have stood in the 
cross way to cut off those of his that escaped, nor have de- 
livered up those of his that remained, in the day of distress." 
" Verily, Esau, thou wert guilty concerning thy brother, 
when thou sawest the anguish of his soul, and when, perhaps, 
like Joseph, he besought thee, and thou wouldst not hear." 
And at thy Philistine forehead was Obadiah commissioned 
to aim one smooth sling-stone, which, having prostrated thee, 
has been preserved for us, in God's word, as a monument of 
thy fratricidal folly. This is that little book of Obadiah. 

HAGGAI. 

Between Obadiah and Haggai, many important events 
had occurred in the history of God's people. The city of 
Jerusalem had been captured, the Temple sacked, and the 
brave but ill-fated inhabitants had been carried captive to 
Babylon. There they had groaned and wept bitterly under 
their bondage, and one song of their captive genius, of une- 



HAGGAI. 



245 



quailed pathos, lias come down to us. " By tlie rivers of 
Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remem- 
bered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the 
midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive 
required of us a song, and they that wasted us required of 
us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How 
shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" How, 
indeed, sing it, save as we may conceive the fiends singing in 
hell the songs of heaven, the words the same, the melodies 
the same, but woe for the accompaniments and for the hearts ? 
How sing here the songs of Judah's vintage, and Julah's 
ingathering, and Judah's marriage feasts 7 Surely, it is the 
most delicate and infernal of insults for a spoiler to demand 
mirth instead of labor, a song instead of patient sorrow ! 
We, they reply, can sing at your bidding no songs of Zion, 
but we can testify our love to her by our tears. And, trick- 
ling through the hand of the taskmaster, and running down 
three thousand years, has one of these tears come to us, and 
we call it the 137th Psalm. 

From this state of degradation and woe, Judah had been 
raised. She had been brought back in circumstances mourn- 
fully different, indeed, from the high day when, coming out 
of Egypt, she turned, and encamping between Pihahiroth 
and the sea, felt that the extremity of the danger was the 
first edge of the rising deliverance, and when she went forth 
by her armies with a mighty power and a stretched out arm. 
Now she must kneel, and have the bandage of her slavery 
taken off by human hands, and be led tamely out into her 
own land, under the banners of a stranger. Even after she 
had reached and commenced the operation of building the 
Temple, numerous difficulties, arising partly from the oppo- 
sition of surrounding tribes, and partly from the indifference 
of the people themselves, were presented. For fourteen or 
fifteen years the enterprise was abandoned, and it is on an 
unfinished Temple that we see Haggai first appearing to stir 
up his slothful, and to comfort his desponding, countrymen. 

We know only of this prophet, that he was born fhiring 
the captivity ; that he had returned with Zerubbabel, and 
flourished under the reign of Darius Hystaspes. 

The right of Haggai to the title poet has been denied, on 
account of his comparatively tame and prosaic style ; but we 
must remember the distinction we have indicated between 



246 HAGGAI. 



poetic statement and poetic song. He ha.s little of the latter, 
but mucli of the former. There is nothing in the Hebrew 
tongue calculated more to rouse the blood, than these simple 
words of his — " Who is there left among you that saw this 
house in its former glory ? And what do ye see it now ? Is 
it not as nothing 1 Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel, saith 
Jehovah. And be strong, Joshua, son of Josedech, the 
high priest. And be strong, all ye people of the land, 
saith Jehovah. And work, for I am with you, saith Jehovah, 
Lord of Hosts. For thus saith Johovah of Hosts, yet once 
more, it is a little while, I will shake the heavens and the 
earth, and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all na- 
tions, and the desire of all nations will come, and I will fill 
this house with glory, saith Jehovah of Hosts. The silver 
is mine, and the gold is mine, saith Jehovah, God of Hosts. 
Greater shall be the glory of this latter house than of the 
former, saith Jehovah, God of Hosts. And in this place will 
I give peace, saith Jehovah, God of Hosts." This, if prose, 
is the prose of a pyramid, or an Olympus, compared with the 
flowery exuberance of Enna or Tempo. It is the bareness 
of grandeur. It is one of the moors of heaven. 

The building of the second Temple had been resigned in 
despair, partly because it was impossible to supply some of 
the principal ornaments of the ancient edifice, such as the 
Urim and Thummim, the ark containing the two tables of 
the law, the pot of manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the 
cloud, or Schekinah, that covered the mercy-seat, and was 
the symbol of the divine glory. It became then the part of 
Haggai, in his work of encouragement and revival, to point 
out the advent of one object to the new Temple, which should 
supply the lack of all. This was to be the living cloud — the 
personal Schekinah — the Christ promised to the fathers. 
And he, when he came, was not only to glorify the mercy- 
seat, and brighten the turban of the high priest as he went 
in to pray, but to pour a radiance over the whole world, of 
which he had been the desire Did the Temple shake when 
the clcRd of glory entered it in Solomon's day? The Earth 
was to respond to the vibration, when the Son of Man came 
to his Father's house. " Tidings of the new Schekinah" may, 
therefore, be the proper title for Haggai's prophecy ; and while 
the old men wept when they contrasted the present with the 
former Temple, he rejoiced, because he saw in the absence of 




AARON'S KOD THAT BUDDED. 



ZECHARIAH. 



249 



those external glories, in the setting of those elder stars, the 
approaching presence of a spiritual splendor — the rising of 
the last great luminary of the Church. 

It was not needful that the herald of an event (compar- 
atively) so near should be dressed in all the insignia of his 
ofl&ce. These had been necessary once to attract attention, 
and secure respect, but now the forerunner was merely, like 
Elijah, " to gird up his loins, and run before" the chariot 
which was at hand. And thus we account for the compara- 
tive bareness of style appertaining to the prophet Haggai. 

His associate in office was 

ZECHARIAH. 

He was the " Son of Barachiah, the son of Iddo." " In 
Ezra," says Dr. Eadie, " he is styled simply the son of Iddo, 
most probably because his father, Barachiah, had died in 
early manhood, and his genealogy, in accordance with Jew- 
ish custom, is traced at once to his grandfather, Iddo, who 
would be better known. He appears to have been a descend- 
ant of Levi, and thus entitled to exercise the priestly, as he 
did the prophetic, office. He entered upon his prophetic du- 
ties in the 8th month of the second year of Darius, about 
520, A.C. Jewish tradition relates that the prophet died in 
his native country, after " a life prolonged to many days," 
and was buried by the side of Haggai, his associate. 

The object of Zechariah is precisely that of Haggai — • 
" writ large." It is to rouse an indolent, to encourage a de- 
sponding, and to abash a backsliding people. This he does, 
if not with greater energy, yet by bolder types, and through 
the force of broader glimpses into the future, than his co- 
adjutor. 

In all prophetical Scripture, we find lofty symbols rush- 
ing down, as if impatient of their elevation, into warm prac- 
tical application, like high white clouds dissolving in rain. 
This we noticed in Ezekiel. But in Zechariah it is more 
remarkable. The red horses, the four horns, the stone with 
seven eyes, the candlestick of gold, the olive-trees, the flying 
roll, the ephah and the talent of lead, the four chariots from 
between the two mountains, the staves Beauty and Bands, 
the cup of trembling, the burdensome stone, aud the foun- 
tain of purification, are not mere brilliant dreams, " for ever 



250 



ZECHARIAH. 



flushing round a summer's sky," but are closely connected 
with the main purposes of the prophecy. It is Haggai's ar- 
gument plead from the clouds. 

The poet who extracts his own thought and imagery from 
ordinary scenery, is worthy of his name. But he is the 
truest maker, who forms a scenery and world of his own. 
This has Zechariah done. The wildest of the " Arabian 
Nights" contains no descriptions so unearthly as those in his 
prophecy. Those mountains, what and where are they? 
Those chariots, whence come, and whither go they ? Those 
four horns, who has raised ? Those red horses, what has 
dyed them ? But strangest and most terrible is the " flying 
roll," " passing like night from land to land" — having " strange 
power of speech," stranger power of silence — a judgment, ver- 
ily, that doth not linger, a damnation that doth not slumber. 
How powerfully does this represent law as a swift execu- 
tioner, winged, and ever ready to follow the trail of crime, 
at once with accusation, sentence, and punishment ! 

From the height of contempt, Zechariah has reached for 
the then state of his country — he has but a few steps to 
rise — to a panoramic prospect of the future, even of its most 
distant points and pinnacles. The long day of Christianity 
itself looks dim in the splendors of its evening ; the second 
advent eclipses the first. The " day of the Lord" surmounts 
all intermediate objects ; and the " last battle" brings his 
prophecy to a resplendent close. 

One stray passage must be noticed, from its connection 
with the New Testament, and the tragedy of the Cross. It 
is that where vhe Lord of Hosts cries out, in his impatience 
and anger, " Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and 
against the man that is my fellow : smite the shepherd, and 
the sheep shall be scattered." How startling the haste of 
this exclamation ! " Haste, for the victim has been bound to 
the altar. Haste, for the' harps in heaven are silent till the 
day of atonement has passed away. Haste, for hell is dumb 
in the agony of its dark anticipations. Haste, for the eyes 
of the universe have been fixed upon the spot ; all things are 
ready ; yea, the sackcloth of the sun has been woven, and 
ere that darkness pass away, the sweat of an infinite agony 
must have been expended, and the blood of an infinite atone- 
ment must have been shed." 

Did not the great victim bear this in view on the last 



MALACHI. 



2Si 



night of his life, when, looking up to the darkened heaven 
and the unsheathed sword, he sounded himself the signal for 
the blow, as he cried, '- It is written, smite the shepherd, and 
the sheep shall be scattered ? " 

This wondrous cry was obeyed. The sword awoke against 
the man, God's fellow. It was " bathed in heaven." And 
now no more is the cry raised, " Awake, sword." Against 
the people of God it is sheathed for ever. Yet shall this 
dread moment never be forgotten. For even as in the glad 
valleys of earth, when sunshine is resting on the landscape, 
the sound of thunder heard remote only enhances the sense 
of security, and deepens the feeling of repose, so, in the 
climes of heaven's-day, shall the memory of that hour so 
dark, and that cry so fearful, be to the souls of the ransomed 
a joy for ever. 

MALACHI. 

The word means " my angel or messenger." Hence some 
have contended that there was no such person as Malachi, 
but that Ezra was the author of the book. Origen even 
maintains that the author was an incarnate angel. The 
general opinion, however, is, that he was a real personage, 
who flourished about four hundred years before Christ. 

It was meet that the ancient dispensation should close 
amid such cloudy uncertainties. It had been all along the 
"religion of the veil." There was a veil, verily, upon more 
than the face of Moses. Every thing from Sinai — its centre, 
down to the least bell or pomegranates-wore a veil. Over 
Malachi's face, form, and fortunes, it hangs dark and impene- 
trable. A masked actor, his tread and his voice are thunder. 
The last pages of the Old Testament seem to stir as in a 
furious wind, and the word, curse, echoing down to the very 
roots of Calvary, closes the record. 

On Malachi's prophecy, there is seen mirrored, in awful 
clearness, in fiery red, the coming of Christ, and of his fore- 
runner, the Baptist. " I will send you Elijah, the prophet, 
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of tlie Lord." 
Last of a long and noble line — fated to have no follower for 
four hundred years — a certain melancholy bedims this pro- 
phet's strains. His language is bare and bald, compared 
with that of some of the others, although this seems to spring 
J? 



252 MALA CHI. 



rather from his subject than himself. The " seal of the pro- 
phets," as the rabbis called him, is a black seal. And thus, 
although he abounds in predictions of Christ's near approach, 
you shut him with a feeling of sadness. 

It is impossible to close this review of Israel's ancient 
bards without very peculiar sensations. We feel as one 
might who had been dwelling for a season among the higher 
Alps, as he turned to the plains again, torrents and avalanches 
still sounding in his ears, and a memory of the upper gran- 
deurs dwindling to his eyes all lower objects. But have we 
brought down with us, and do we wish to confer on others, 
nothing but admiration ? Nay, verily, these Alps of human- 
ity waft down many important lessons. Showing how high 
man has attained in the past, they show the altitude of the 
man of the future world. To the poet, how exciting, at 
once, and humbling ! He complains, at times, that he too 
soon and easily overtakes his models, and finds them cloud 
or clay after all; but here are models for ever above and be- 
yond him, as are the stars. And yet he is permitted to look 
at, to be lightened by them, " to roll their raptures, and to 
catch their fire." Here are Grod's own pictures, glowing on 
the inaccessible walls. To the believer in their supernatural 
claims, how thrilling the proud reflection — this bark, as it 
carries me to heaven, has the flag of earthly genius floating 
above it. To the worshipper of genius, these books present 
the object no longer as an idol, but as a god. The admirer 
of man finds him here in his highest mood and station, speak- 
ing from the very door of the eternal shrine, with God tuning 
his voice and regulating his periods. Genius and religion 
are here seen wedded to each other, with unequal dowries, in- 
deed, but with one heart. And there is thus conveyed, in pa- 
rable, the prospect of their eternal union. 

And can we close this old volume without an emotion of 
unutterable astonishment ? Here, from the rudest rock, has 
distilled the sweetest honey of song. The simplest and most 
limited of languages has been the medium of the loftiest elo- 
quence — the oaten pipe of the Hebrew shepherd has pro- 
duced a music, to which that of the ^^ecian organ and the 
Latin fife is discord. Here, too, cent^ies before the Au- 
gustan age, are conceptions of God T^jaich Cicero never 
grasped, nor Virgil ever sung. Hace^* climate, original 



MALACHI. 



255 



genius, will not altogether account for this. The real 
answer to the question, Why burned that bush so brightly 
amid the lonely wilderness, is, Grod, the Grod of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, of Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel, dwdt 
t?oerdn, and the place is still lovely, yet dreadful, with his 
presence. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYING NEW TESTAMENT POETRJT. 

The main principle of the Old Testament may be comprised 
in the sentence, " Fear God, and keep his commandments : 
this is the whole duty of man." The main principle of the 
New is, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt 
be saved." And yet, round these two simple sentences, what 
masses of beauty and illustration have been collected ! To 
enforce them, what argument, what eloquence, what poetry, 
have been employed ! Say, rather, that those truths, from 
their exceeding breadth, greatness, and magnetic power, have 
levied a tribute from multitudinous regions, and made every 
form of thought and composition subservient to their influ- 
ence and end. 

The New Testament, as well as the Old, is a poem — the 
Odyssey to that Iliad. And over the poetry of both, cir 
cumstances and events have exerted a modifying power. 
Yet it is remarkable, that in the New Testament, although 
events of a marvellous kind were of frequent occurrence, 
they are not used so frequently in a poetical way as, in the 
Old. The highest poetry in the New Testament, is either 
didactic in its character, as the Sermon on the Mount, and 
Paul's praise of charity, or it is kindled up by visions of the 
future, and apparitions through the present darkness of the 
great white throne. 

The resurrection, as connected with the doctrine of a 
general judgment, is the event which has most colored the 
poetry of the New Testament. The throne becomes a far 
more commanding object than even the mount that might be 
touched. Faint, in fact, is the reflection of this '• G-reat 
Vision" upon the page of ancient prophecy: the trump is 



256 



CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYING 



heard, as if from a distance ; the triumph of life over death 
is anticipated seldom, and with little rapture. But no sooner 
do we reach the threshold of the new dispensation, than we 
meet voices from the interior of the sanctuary, proclaiming a 
judgment ; the sign of the Son of Man is advanced above, 
the graves around are seen with the tombstones loosened and 
the turf broken, and " I shall arise " hovering in golden 
characters over each narrow house ; the central figure bruises 
death under his feet, and points with a cross to the distant 
horizon, where life and immortality are cleaving the clouds, 
and coming forth with beauty and healing on their wings. 
Such the prospect in our Christian sanctuary ; and hence the 
supernatural grandeur of the strains which swell within it. 
Hence the rapture of the challenge, " death, where is thy 
sting ?" Hence the solemnity of the assertion, " Marvel not 
at this, for the hour is coming when they that are in the 
graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man." Hence the 
fiery splendor of the description, " The Lord himself shall 
descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and 
the trump of God." Hence the harping symphonies and 
sevenfold hallelujahs of the Apocalypse, " I saw the dead, 
small and great, stand before Grod." Here, indeed, is a 
source of inspiration, open only to the New Testament 
writers. The heathens knew not of the resurrectioi of the 
dead. But Paul and John have extracted a poetry from the 
darkness of the grave. In heathen belief, there was, indeed, 
a judgment succeeding the death of the individual ; but no 
general assemblage, no public trial, no judgment-seat, "high 
and lifted up," no flaming universe, and, above all, no God- 
man swaying the fiery storm, and, with the hand that had 
been nailed to the cross, opening the books of universal and 
final decision. 

" Meditations among the Tombs," what a pregnant title to 
what a feeble book ! Ah ! the tombs are vaster and more 
numerous than Hervey dreamed. There is the churchyard 
among the mountains, where the "rude forefathers of the 
hamlet lie." There is the crowded cemetery of the town, 
wliere silent thousands have laid themselves down to repose. 
There are the wastes and wildernesses of the world, where 
" armies whole have sunk," and where the dead have here 
their shroud of sand, and there their shroud of snow. There 
is the hollow of the earth, where Korah, Dathan, and Abi- 



NEW TESTAMENT POETRY. 



257 



ram, and many besides, have been ingulfed. There are 
the fields of battle, which have become scenes of burial, as 
well as death. And there is the great ocean, which has 
wrapped its garment of green round many a fair and noble 
head, and which rolls its continual requiem of sublimity and 
sadness over the millions whom it has entombed. Thus does 
the earth, with all its continents and oceans, roll around the 
sun a splendid sepulchre ! 

Amid those dim catacombs, what victims have descended ! 
The hero, who has coveted the dreadful distinction of enter- 
ing hell, red from a thousand victories, is in the grave. The 
EAge, who has dared to say that, if he had been consulted in 
the making of the universe he had made it better, is in the 
grave. The monarch, who has wept for more worlds to con- 
quer and to reign over, is in the grave. The poet, who, tow- 
ering above his kind, had seemed to demand a contest with 
superior intelligences, and sought to measure his pen against 
the red thunderbolts of Heaven, is in the grave. Where 
now the ambition of the first, the insane presumption of the 
second, the idle tears of the third, the idler laurels of the 
last ? All gone, sunk, lost, drowned, in that ocean of Death, 
where no oar ever yet broke the perpetual silence ! 

But, alas ! these graves are not full. In reason's ear— 
an ear ringing ever with strange and mystic sounds — there 
is heard a voice, from the thousand tombs, saying — " Yet there is 
room." The churchyard among the hills has a voice, and 
says — '• There is room under the solitary birch which waves 
over me." The city cemetery hath a voice, and says — • 
" Crowded as I am, I can yet open a corner for thy dust ; 
yet there is room." The field of battle says — " There is 
room. I have earth enough to cover all my slain." The 
wildernesses have a voice, and say — '• There is room in us — 
room for the travellers who explore our sands or our snows 
— room for the caravans that carry their merchandise across 
our dreadful solitudes." The depth of the ocean says — 
" Thousands have gone down within me — nay, an entire 
world has become the prey of my waters, still my caverns 
are not crowded ; yet there is room." The heart of the 
earth has a voice — a hollow voice — and says — " What are 
Korah and his company to me ? I am empty ; yet there is 
room." Do not all the graves compose thus one melancholy 
chorus, and say — " Yet there is room ; room for thee, thou 



258 CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYING 

maiden, adorned with virtue and loveliness ; room for thee, 
thou aged man ; room for thee, thou saint, as surely as there 
was room for thy Saviour ; room for thee, thou sinner, as 
surely as thy kindred before thee have laid themselves and 
their iniquities down in the dust ; room for all, for all must 
in us at last lie down." 

But is this sad cry to resound for ever ? No ; for we are 
listening for a mightier voice, which is yet to pierce the cold 
ear of death, and drown the dull monotony of the grave. 
How magnificent, even were they fictitious, but how much 
more, as recording a fact, the words — " All that are in the 
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth." To what 
voices do the dead not listen ! Music can charm the serpent, 
but it cannot awaken the dead. The voice of an orator can 
rouse a nation to frenzy, but let him try his eloquence on the 
dead, and a hollow echo will rebuke his folly. The thunder 
in the heavens can appal a city, but there is one spot in it 
where it excites no alarm, and that spot is the tomb. 

"The lark's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
No moi*e arouse them from their narrow bed." 

There is but one voice which the dead will hear. It is that 
voice which shall utter the words — "Awake and sing, ye that 
dwell in dust ; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the 
earth shall cast out the dead." 

Was it a sublime spectacle, when, at the cry, " Lazarus, 
come forth," the dead man appeared at the mouth of the 
sepulchre, the hue of returning life on his cheek, forming a 
strange contrast to his white grave-clothes ? What, then, 
shall be said of the coming forth of innumerable Lazaruses, 
of the whole congregation of the dead — the hermit rising 
from his solitary grotto, the soldier from his field of blood, 
the sailor from his sea-sepulchre, the shepherd from his 
mountain-grave ? To see — as in the season of spring, the 
winged verdure climbs the mountain, clothes the plain, 
flushes the forest, adorns the brink and the brow of the pre- 
cipice — in this second spring, a torrent of life passing over 
the world, and living men coming forth, where all before had 
been silence, desolation, and death ; to see the volcano dis- 
gorging the dead which were in him, and the earthquake 
relaxing his jaws, and giving back the dead which were in 
him, and the sullen tarn restoring her lawful captives, and 



NEW TESTAMENT POETRY. 



259 



the ocean unrolling and revealing the victims of her " inner- 
most main," and the Seine disclosing her suicidal prey, and 
the wastes and wildernesses becoming unretentive of their 
long-concealed dead — every pore quickening into life, every 
grave becoming a womb. This is the spectacle of the Chris- 
tian resurrection — a spectacle but once to be beheld, but to 
be remembered for ever — a spectacle which every eye shall 
witness — a spectacle around which a universe shall gather 
with emotions of uncontrollable astonishment and of fearful 
joy. 

The New Testament stands and shines in the lustre of 
this expectation. So important is the place of resurrection 
in the system, that Jesus identifies himself with it, saying — 
" I am the resurrection and the life." And from his empty 
grave floods of meaning, hope, and beauty, flow forth over 
the New Testament page. The Lord's day, too, forms a link 
connecting the rising of Christ with that of his people, and 
is covered with the abundance both of the first fruits and of 
the full harvest. 

Among the incidents in the life of Christ, there are 
several of an intensely poetical character. We shall mention 
here the Transfiguration. This singular event did not take 
place, as commonly supposed, on Tabor. Tabor was then 
the seat of a Roman military fort. It took place on a high 
nameless mountain, probably in Galilee. It was seemingly 
on the Sabbath-day {-'After six days. Jesus took Peter, James, 
and John, up into an high mountain apart ") that this grand 
exception to the tenor of Christ's earthly history was mani- 
fested. It was a rehearsal of his Ascension. His form, 
which had been bent under a load of sorrow (a bend more 
glorious than the bend of the rainbow), now erected itself, 
like the palm-tree from pressure, and he became like unto a 
'^ pillar in the temple of his God." His brow expanded ; its 
wrinkles of care fled, and the sweat-drops of his climbing toil 
were transmuted into sparks of glory. His eye flashed 
forth, like the sun from behind a cloud — nay, his whole 
frame became transparent, as if it were one eye. The light 
which had long lain in it concealed was now unveiled in full 
efi"ulgence : " His face did shine as the sun." His very 
raiment was caught in a shower of radiance, and became 
white as no fuller on earth could whiten it; and who shall 
describe the lustre of the streaming hair, or the eloquent 



26o CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYING 

silence of that smile which sat, like the love of God, upon 
his lips ? 

" What hill is like to Tabor hill, in beauty and in fame, 
For there, in sad days of his flesh, o'er Christ a glory came, 
And light o'erflowed him like a sea, and raised his shining brow, 
And the voice came forth, which bade all worlds the Son of God 
avow ■?" 

This radiance passed away. The glory of the transfig- 
ured Jesus faded, as the red cloud fades in the west, when 
the sun has set. (And how could the disciples bear the 
change ? And yet, as Christ, in his coronation robes, had 
seemed, perhaps, distant and strange to them, did not his 
returning self appear dearer, if less splendid, than his glori- 
fied humanity?) But the glory did not pass without leaving 
a mild reflex upon the page of Scripture. " We were with 
him in the holy mount," says Peter ; and was not the trans- 
figured Christ in his eye when he speaks immediately after 
of " The day-star arising in our hearts ?" And John's pic- 
ture of Christ in the Apocalypse, is a colossal copy of the 
figure he had seen on the holy mount, vibrating between dust 
and Deity, at once warm as humanity, and glorious as God. 

As producing or controlling the poetry of the New Tes- 
tament, next to the resurrection, stands the incarnation. 
" Will God in very deed dwell with men upon the earth ?" 
Will God, above all, dwell in a form of human flesh, and so 
dwell, that we must say of it, " God is here," nay, " this is 
God ?" Is there found a point where the finite and the infi- 
nite meet, mingle without confusion, marry without compul- 
sion, and is this point the Man of Galilee ? In fact, the in- 
carnation and poetry bear a resemblance. Poetry is truth 
dwelling in beauty. The incarnation of the Word " made" 
holy and beauteous " flesh." Poetry is the everlasting de- 
scent of the Jupiter of the True into the arms of the Danae 
of the Beautiful, in a shower of gold. The incarnation is 
God the Spirit, descending on Jesus the perfect man, like a 
dove, and abiding upon and within him. The difi'erence is, 
that while the truth of Jesus is entirely moral, that of poetry 
is more varied ; and that while the one incarnation is personal 
and real, the other is hypothetical and ideal. Man and God 
have rhymed together ; and the glorious couplet is, " the 
mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh." 

" From this fact have sprung the matchless antitheses and 



NEW TESTAMENT POETRY. 263 

climaxes of Paul's prose poetry, Peter's fervid meditations 
on the glory of Christ, and John's pantings of love toward 
the " Man of God," on whose bosom he had leaned, and whose 
breath had made him for ever warm. 

But, without dwelling on other circumstances modifying 
New Testament poetry, we pass to speak, in the next chapter, 
of the Poetry of the Gospels, and of that transcendent poet 
who died on Calvary. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 

Perhaps we had better have designated this chapter * The 
Poetry of Jesus," for nearly all the poetry in the four Evan- 
gelists clusters in, around his face, form, bearing, and words. 

The word " character," as applied to Jesus, is a misnomer. 
Character seems generally to mean something outstanding 
from the being — a kind of dress worn outwardly ; at best, a 
faint index to the qualities within. Thus, to say of a man, 
" he has a good moral character," is to say little. You still 
ask, what is he? what is the nature of his being? to what 
order does he belong ? is he of the earth earthy, or born from 
above? It is of Christ's being, not his character, that we 
would speak, while seeking to show its essential poetry. 

The company of the disciples in the " Acts," have an- 
swered, by anticipation, all questions about Christ's being, in 
the memorable words, " thy holy child^ Jesus." He was a 
child — a holy child — a divine child — an eternal child. He 
seems still to sit " among the doctors," with Zoroaster, and 
Moses, and Confucius, and Socrates, and Plato, ranged 
around him, "both hearing them and asking them ques- 
tions " while they, like 'the sheaves of Joseph's brethren, are 
compelled to bow down before the noble boy. His sermons, 
possessing no logical sequence and coherence, are the utter- 
ances of a divine infant ; the tongue is just a produced heart ; 
and his words flow up, in irregular yet calm succession, from 
the depth below. And yet all he says is, " like an angel, 
vital everywhere," and each word is a whole. Like jewels 



264 POETRY OP THE GOSPELS. 



from a crown, the sentences drop down entire : " Ye are the 
light of the world ;" " Ye are the salt of the earth ;" " What 
I tell you in darkneSiS, that speak ye in light ; " If thine eye 
be single, thy whole body shall be full of light ; " If the light 
that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness !" 
(How many dark lanterns — such as misguided men of genius 
• — does this one sentence inclose !) And are not all incon- 
sistent, half-formed, or conventional systems of morality, 
exploded by the grand generality — the scope transcending 
far the duration of this mortal life for its aim and accom- 
plishment — of the words, " Be ye perfect, as your Father in 
heaven is perfect ?" 

But wholeness belonged to more than Christ's words ; it 
belonged to himself and to his words, because they faithfully 
and fully represented himself, even as the acorn carries in it 
the figure of the oak. He was entire ; and his possession 
of all virtues was signified by the gentle calm which reigned 
over, and inclosed them within it. Just as the whole man 
comes out in his smile, the " fulness of the G-odhead" lay, 
like a still, settled smile, on Christ's meek face. His eye 
concentrated all the rays of the Divine Omniscience into its 
mild and tearful orb. His heart was a miniature ocean of 
love. His arm seemed the symbol of Omnipotence. His 
Toice was the faint and thrilling echo of the sound of many 
waters. We are apt to think and speak as if the attributes 
of Divinity were somehow crowded and crushed into Mary's 
son. But those who saw him and believed, felt that God- 
head lay in him softly and fully, as the image of the sun lies 
in a drop of dew. '• In him dwelt the fulness of Godhead 
bodily," as a willing tenant, not as a reluctant captive 

But, as a man, as well as the incarnation of G-odhead, he 
was perfect. Beside the stately, ancient, and awful forms 
of the patriarchs of the old world, and the bards and first 
kings of Israel, he seems young and slender. What were 
his years to those of Adam and Methuselah ? He wrote not, 
like Solomon, on trees — from the cedar on Lebanon to the 
hyssop which springeth out of the wall. He had no Sinai 
for pedestal, as Moses had. He had not the mighty speech 
of Isaiah. But he possessed what all these wanted — he pos- 
sessed perfection. He was only a child, but he was a celes- 
tial child ; he was only a lamb, but it was a lamb without 
blemish and without soot. In him, as God-man, all contrasts 



POETRY OP THE GOSPELS. 267 

and contradictions were blended and reconciled. You hear 
him now, in tones soft as youthful love, preaching concord to 
his disciples ; and again, in the Toice of a terrible thunder, 
and with the gestures of an avenger, denouncing wrath upon 
the hypocrite and the formalist, the Pharisee, and the Scribe. 
Hear yonder infant weeping in the manger of Bethlehem. 
That little trembling hand is the hand of him who made the 
world ; that feeble, wailing cry is the voice of him who spake, 
and it was done — who commanded, and it stood fast. See 
that carpenter laboring in the shed at Nazareth ! The 
penalty of Adam is standing on his brow in the sweat-drops 
of his toil. That carpenter is all the while directing the 
march of innumerable suns, and supplying the wants of end- 
less worlds. Behold yonder weeper at the grave of Lazarus ! 
His tears are far too numerous to be counted ; it is a shower 
of holy tears, and the bystanders are saying — - Behold, how 
he loved him !" That weeper is the Eternal God, who shall 
wipe away all tears from off all faces. See, again, that suf- 
ferer in the Garden of Gethsemane ! He is alone ; there is 
no one with him in his deep agony ; and you hear the large 
drops of his anguish, " like the first of a thunder-shower," 
falling slowly and heavily to the ground. And, louder than 
these drops, there comes a voice, saying — " Father, if it be 
possible, let this cup pass from me." The utterer of that sad 
cry, the swelterer of those dark drops, is he whom the harps 
of heaven are even now praising, and who is basking in the 
sunshine of Jehovah's smile. " Without controversy, great 
is the mystery of godliness." 

The reticence of Jesus is one of the most remarkable of 
his characteristics. What he might have told us, in compa- 
rison of what he has ! — of man, of God, of the future on 
earth, of the eternal state ! '• He knew what was in man.'" 
" The Son only knoweth the Father." " Thou, Lord, knowest 
all things." But he remained silent. Nor was his silence 
forced and reluctant. It was wise and willing. It seemed 
natural to him, as is their twinkling silence to the stars. 
This surrounded him with a peculiar grandeur. The greatest 
objects in the universe are the stillest The ocean has a 
voice, but the sun is silent. The seraphim sing, the Sche- 
kinah is dumb. The forests murmur, but the constellations 
speak not. Aaron spoke, Moses' face but shone. Sweetly 
might the high priest discourse, but the XJrim and Thummim. 



268 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 

the blazing stones upon his breast, flashed forth a meaning 
deeper and diviner far. Jesus, like a sheep before her 
shearers, was dumb in death ; but still more marvellous was 
the self-denied and Godlike silence of his life. 

The secret of this silence lay partly in the practicalness 
of his purpose. He had three great things to do in the 
space of three years, and he could spare no time for doing 
or talking about aught else. He had to preach a pure mo- 
rality, to live a pure life, and to die a death of substitution 
so vast, as to stop the motions of the universe till it was over. 
This was the full baptism wherewith he was to be baptized. 
He was straitened till it was accomplished. He bent bis un- 
divided energies to finish this threefold work ; and he did 
finish it. He reduced morality to a clear essence, forming a 
perfect mirror to the conscience of man. He melted down 
all codes of the past into two consummate precepts. To 
these he added the double sanction of love and terror. And 
thus condensed, and thus sanctioned, he applied them fear- 
lessly to all classes by whom he was surrounded. He did 
something far more difficult. He led a life — and such a life ! 
of poverty and power, of meanness and grandeur, of con- 
tempt and glory, of contact with sinners and of perfect per- 
sonal purity — a life the most erratic and the most heavenly — 
a life from which demons shrank in terror, round which men 
crowded in eager curiosity, and over which angels stooped in 
wonder and love — a life which gathered about the meek cur- 
rent of its benevolence the fiery chariots and fiery horses of 
all miraculous gifts and all divine energies. And having 
thus lived, he came purged, as by fire, to a death, which 
seemed to have borrowed materials of terror, from earth, 
heaven, and hell, to bow down along with its own burden 
upon his solitary head. 

But, to humble him to submission, the fearful load of 
Calvary was not required. He was humble all his life long, 
and never more so than when working his miracles. How 
he shrunk, after they were wrought, from the echo of their 
fame! He did not rebuke the woman of Samaiia for pro- 
claiming her conversion, but he often rebuked his disciples 
for spreading the report of his miracles. These were great, 
but his purpose was greater far. They were an equipage 
worthy of a Grod, but only an equipage. If we would under- 
stand his profound lowliness, let us see him, who had been 



POETRY OF THE GOSPEL^. 269 



clothed with the inaccessible light as a garment, girding 
himself with a towel, and washing his disciples' feet ; or let 
us look at him, who erst came from " Teman and from Paran," 
in all the pomp of Godhead, riding on an ass, and a colt, the 
foal of an ass ; or let us watch the woman washing his feet 
n^ith tears, and wiping them with the hairs of her head ; or 
let us sit down by the side of the well at Samaria, and see 
him who fainted not, neither was weary, with " his six days' 
work — a world," wearied upon this solitary way, and hear 
him, who was the Word of God, speaking to a poor and dis- 
solute female as "never man spake." Surely one great 
charm of this charmed life, one chief power of this all-power- 
ful and all-conforming story, arises from the lowliness of the 
base of that ladder, the " top of which did reach unto hea- 
ven." 

But this lowliness was mingled with gentleness. It was 
a flower which grew along the ground — not a fire running 
along it. We have no doubt that this expressed itself in the 
very features and expression of his countenance. We have 
seen but one pictured representation which answered to our 
ideal of the face and figure of Jesus. It was the work of an 
Italian master, whose name we have forgotten, and repre- 
sented Christ talking to the woman of Samaria. It was a 
picture which might have converted a soul. There sat the 
wearied Saviour, by the well-side — his eye full of a far look 
of love and sorrow, as if he saw the whole degraded species 
in the one sinner before him, and his hand half open, as if it 
held in it " the living water" — the woman listening with 
downcast looks, and tears trickling down her cheeks — her 
pitcher resting on the mouth of the well, and behind her, 
seen in the distance, the sunny sky and glowing mountains 
of Palestine. But, in the noble figure and the ethereal gran- 
deur of his countenance, you saw that the gentleness was not 
that of woman, nor even that of man ; it was the gentleness 
of him whose " dwelling is with the humble and the contrite 
in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and the heart of 
the contrite ones." It was this which led him to gentle as- 
sociates — to the society of the holy women, and of those 
children who saw the simplicity of infancy blended with the 
perspicacity of Godhead in the same face, and felt at once 
awestruck and attracted. The babes and sucklings saw and 
felt what was hid from the wise and prudent. But the chief 
18 



270 



POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 



scene for the exercise of this exceeding gentleness was the 
company #f publicans, sinners, and harlots. The sight of 
personified purity mingling with the vilest of beings, with 
condescension, blame, hope, and pity expressed in his coun- 
tenanoe, instead of disgust and horror, was touching beyond 
the reach of tears. Like the moon looking full in upon a 
group of evil-doers, at once rebuking, softening, and spiritu- 
alizing the scene, so at Simon's table shone on the sinners 
around, the shaded orb of the Redeemer's face, and it seemed 
as if heaven were dimly dawning upon the imminent victims 
of hell. 

And yet, with this mildness, there was blended a certain 
ineffable dignity. The dignity of a child apprc aches the sub- 
lime. It is higher than the dignity of a king — higher, be- 
cause less conscious. It resembles rather the dignity of the 
tall rock, or of the pine surmounting its summit. This dig- 
nity, compounded of purity and unconsciousness, was united 
in Christ to that which attends knowledge and power. It 
was this which made the people exclaim, that he taught with 
authority, and not as the scribes — that wrung from the offi- 
cers sent to apprehend him, the testimony that never man 
spake like this man, and rendered lofty, instead of ludicrous, 
his asseveration, " I and my Father are one." A dignity this 
which deserted him not, even when he wore the scarlet robe, 
and carried the reed for a sceptre, and the thorns for a crown ; 
nay, which transfigured these into glorious emblems in the 
blaze of spirit which shone around him. The old painters 
often paint Christ with a halo around his head. No such 
halo had, or needed, that holy brow ; it was enough that a 
divine dignity formed a hedge around it. 

But, "on all his glory," there was another "defence" — a 
red rim of anger circled it at times. The "Lamb" became, 
at rare intervals, angry, and sinned not in feeling or in ex- 
pressing that righteous rage — righteous, although seeming 
strange as a volcano in a valley, or as thunder from the blue 
sky. The forked flames of Sinai burst out from Olivet, the 
lips of eternal love become white with the foam of indigna- 
tion, and upon his enemies there fall "woes," heavier than 
those of the ancient seers, and which seem to rehearse the 
last words, "Depart, ye cursed." There are no such tremen- 
dous voices in all literature as these. We feel, as we listen, 
that there is no enemy like an offended lover — no fire like 



POETRY OP THE GOSPELS. 



271 



the sheen of a dead affection — no element so bitter as that 
into which neglect changes the sweet — no words like these, 
"The wrath of the Lamb." "The wrath of the Lamb!" 
These are words from which heaven and earth shall flee away, 
and which shall make its victims cry out to the rocks and 
the mountains, " Cover us, cover us from the wrath of him 
that sitteth upon the throne, and of tJie Lamb;" but the 
rocks and the mountains will not reply. 

Such displays of anger were few and far between. They 
seem escapes, albeit, always just in their cause and holy in 
their spirit. And escapes, too, seem his prophecies and his 
miracles. "Virtue goes out of him." Portions of his infi- 
nite knowledge slip, as if involuntarily, from his mind, and 
now and then crumbs drop down from the table of his Om- 
nipotence upon the happy bystanders. It is always as if he 
were restraining his boundless powers and gifts, as if he 
"stayed his thunder in mid-volley;" for, does he not say 
himself, " Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Fa- 
ther, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions 
of angels ? " Miracles, as we have before hinted, he holds in 
severe subordination to the moral purposes of his office, and 
hence he would never work them, either merely to gratify 
curiosity or expressly to corroborate his mission. They 
came from him like sudden reflections of the sun upon the 
eye or brow, and thus they answered the important purpose 
of turning attention towards him — of proving that what he 
said was not to be treated lightly — of showing him to be 
superior to a mere teacher — of starting the question, " Is the 
doctrine worthy of the magnificence of the circumstances in 
which it is set?" — of causing a finger of supernal light to 
rest upon the head of the lowly youth of Nazareth — and to 
mark him out, once and for ever, to the world. The feeling, 
too, that a miraculous energy was fluctuating around, and 
might flame up in a moment into a conflagration, dangerous 
to be approached, served to clear a space about, and pave a 
way before him, and to leave him ample time and room for 
working the work his Father had given him to do. 

Superiority to pride of knowledge and power was a dis- 
tinguishing feature of Jesus. Pride cannot, indeed, coexist 
with perfect knowledge and power, for it implies as certainly 
something above, as something below it. The proud man 
looks up as well as down, measuring himself with what is be 



272 



POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 



yond, as well as with what is beneath him. But this superi- 
ority in our blessed Lord was only a part of that uncon- 
sciousness which so signally characterized him. He seemed 
conscious of Grod only. He overflowed with God. Even 
when he spoke of himself, it was but as a vessel where Grod 
dwelt. His frequent " I " is always running into the great 
'• Thou " of God. " He that hath seen me, hath seen the 
Father." This was all that we can conceive of absorption 
into the Deity. The essence, indeed, is never lost, nor the 
personality confounded ; but the Son, ever rushing into his 
Father's arms, seems almost identified with him. 

Is the term geniality too common and too low to be ap- 
plied to this transcendent being? And yet it forms but a 
true and elegant version of the rude vernacular of his enemies. 
"Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber." No fugitive 
from the temptations and responsibilities of man was man's 
Saviour. He foared them not ; he faced them, and he never 
fell before them. He came " eating and drinking," and an- 
gels wondered, and sinners wondered, as they saw those com- 
mon actions glorified into symbols and sacraments, the bread 
becoming the "corn of heaven" under his smile, and the 
wine seeming pure as his own blood beneath his blessing. 

On all anchoritism and monachism, he looked down. Un- 
breathed valor, unexercised virtue, chastity untried, compul- 
sory temperance, the ostrich device of hiding the eyes from 
danger, were alien, if not abhorrent, to his frank, large, and 
fearless nature. Think of the marriage at Cana of Galilee. 
We stay not, with triflers, to inquire at length into the qual- 
ity of the wine there transmuted. Sufl&ce it, that in the 
language of the Eton boy, "The conscious water saw her 
God, and blushed." Suffice it that this, surely, like all Christ's 
miracles, must have been perfect in its kind. He made the 
tongue of the dumb not merely to speak, but to sing; he 
made the lame not only to walk, but to leap as a hart; the 
blind to see, at first, indeed, men like trees walking, but ulti- 
mately with the utmost clearness ; and the paralytic to take 
up his bed and walk ; the calm he produced on the sea was 
a " great calm ;" the bread he multiplied must have been of 
the finest of the wheat ; and doubtless the wine he renewed 
in the vessels of Cana was of the richest of the vintage. 
His lessons, stated or implied here or elsewhere on the sub- 
ject, are none the less imnerative. They seem to be these — 



POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 



275 



first, that all excess is sin ; secondly, that the moderate use 
of God's bounties can never be charged in itself with ini- 
quity ; but, thirdly, he never denies, nay, the spirit of his 
teaching' rather affirms, that there are cases and constitutions 
where even moderation may be dangerous, as the parent and 
prelude of undue indulgence, and where sacrifice may be 
better than mercy. 

And yet tradition has said that Jesus was seldom seen 
to smile, and never to laugh. Such traditions we hold 
worthless, for why should not smiles, at least, like birds of 
calm, have often sat upon his lips, and Grod's sunshine upon 
that " hill of holiness," his divine head ? But there lay a 
burden upon his soul, which made his smiles few, and his 
sunshine a scattered light. Even as the noble charger smells 
the battle afar ofi", and paws restlessly till he has mingled 
with the thunder of the captains and the shouting, so did 
this " Lion of the tribe of Judah" feel the approach of his 
foes, nor could he rest, nor could he slumber, till he had 
fought the battle, and gained the victory of the world. 
There were constant vision and expectation of the decease 
at Jerusalem, and this bred a burning desire after the pas- 
sion of the Cross, which formed a slow, subdued fever within 
him. "' I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I 
straitened till it be accomplished ! With desire have I de- 
sired to eat this passover ere I sufiier." Even on the mount 
of the Transfiguration, he looked toward Calvary, and spake 
of his coming death. This added a melancholy meaning to 
his words, a nobility to his aspect, and a tremulous solemnity 
to his very smiles. Great always is the life which stands 
even, unconsciously, in the shadow of coming death. The 
shadow that coming event casts before it is ever sublime and 
sublimating. 

Yet, as it drew near, his manhood came out in the form 
of a manlike shudder at the unspeakable cup which was 
given him to drink. He saw down into it more clearly than 
ever sufferer was permitted before or since to see into his 
coming woes ; and if he did shrink and shiver, the shrinking 
was but for a moment, and the shiver proved him human, 
and that his torments would not be the incredible impossible 
agonies of a God, but those of one who was bone of our 
bone, as well as the brightness of the Father's glory. It 
was, indeed, an awful moment, during which he gasped out 



276 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 

the words, " Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from 
me." He had tasted of its first drops, and they were the 
great drops of the bloody sweat ; he had looked into its eon- 
tents, and seen them bubbling up like the springs of hell, 
and he gave one start backwards, and the cup was just 
passing out of his hands. Passing into whose ? Into ours, 
to be drained for ever, and ever, and ever ! But, blessed be 
his name, the start and spasm were momentary; he grasped 
the cup again, and said, in tones which thrilled every leaf 
in the garden, " Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be 
done." 

Death is often at once the close and the epitome of life. 
It is the index at the end of the volume. All the man's 
properties seem to rush round him as he is about to leave the 
world. This was eminently true of Christ. How emphati- 
cally he was himself in the judgment-hall and on the Cross ! 
His reticence became a silence like that of a dumb spirit, at 
which Pilate trembled. His gentleness swelled into the god- 
like, as he healed the servant's ear, or said, " Daughters of 
Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and 
for your children." His dignity seems to have risen, like a 
mountain-wave, under the marks of contempt which were 
heaped upon him. His humility and submission assumed an 
air of Atlantean grandeur, as the burden of the world's 
atonement at length lay fully on his shoulders. And power 
never, not even when he rebuked the waves, or rode into 
Jerusalem, lay so legibly on his forehead or in his eye, as 
when he hung upon the tree. The Cross was the meeting- 
place, not only of all the attributes of Godhead, here recon- 
ciled through its " witty invention," but of all the attributes 
of Christ's princely manhood. 

The circumstances of his death were worthy of the cha- 
racter and of the object. While he hung suspended, the 
pulse of the universe seemed now to stand still in collapse, 
and now to run on with the fiery haste of a feverous paroxysm. 
There was a great earthquake, which opened the adjacent 
graves, and startled the slumbers of the dead within them. 
The rocks were rent as by a burning hand, and it seemed as if 
the same hand passed along to tear the veil of the Temple 
in sunder. About the sixth hour, there was darkness over 
all the land until the ninth hoar, and the sun was darkened. 
And most wonderful of all, a poor ruffian soul, shivering on 



POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 



277 



the brink of destruction, was, in the very depth of the world- 
tragedy, snatched, like a brand from the burning, by the 
nailed and bleeding arm of the sufferer. 

It was meet that a deep darkness, expressing the anger 
of God, the evil of sin, and the anguish of the Saviour, 
should cover the earth — that nature, unable to look upon the 
features of her expiring Lord, should throw a veil over the 
scene and the sufferer. Nay, is it a conception too daring 
that this darkness covered the universe, that " all the bright 
lights of heaven" were darkened over the Cross, that not 
one orb ventured to shine while the " Bright and Morning 
Star" was under eclipse, that from Christ's dying brow the 
shadow swept over suns, constellations, and firmaments, till 
for three hours, save the throne of the Eternal, all was gloom ? 
Be this as it may, when the veil was removed, how strange 
the revelation ! There hung the Saviour, dead ; there were 
the two thieves, in the agonies of approaching dissolution ; 
farther on, were the multitudes, with rage, fear, and gratified 
revenge, contending on their faces ; and farther on still, the 
towers of the city, the pinnacles of the temple, and the dis- 
tant hills, all shining out as in a newborn radiance. For now 
the battle was over, the victory won, the darkness past, the 
salvation finished, the Saviour himself away, already rejoic- 
ing in the bowers and blessedness of the paradise of God. 

But we must withdraw our feet from a ground so holy, 
and so mysteriously shadowed, as that surrounding the Cross 
of Christ. Silence here is devotion ; and where wonder is 
so fully fed, it must be silent. Much as we admire the pic- 
torial art, we do not like pictures of the death of Christ. 
There was a painter in ancient Greece, who sought to repre- 
sent the grief of Agamemnon at the death of his daughter, 
Iphigenia. How did he represent it ? He gained the praises 
of all antiquity, and of all time, by not doing it at all. He 
drew a curtain over the face of the agonized parent. Thus 
let us, in imitation of the universe, draw a curtain over the 
solemn, the unfathomable scene. 

Christ, in the grave, presents softer and less terrible 
points of view. He lies down wearied, exhausted, alone, but 
triumphant — " like a warrior taking his rest." A guard of 
soldiers watches his sepulchre; but angels are watching there 
too, and the soft shadows of their wings give a mild sub- 
limity to the new tomb. It is a high glad day throughout 



278 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 

the invisible moral creation. Christ's work is done. The 
great redemption is complete. The Saviour's body " sleeps 
well." His spirit is preaching to the spirits in prison. The 
morrow shall dawn upon his resurrection. And therefore 
the sun eclipsed yesterday is shining with a serene and cheer- 
ful ray. And perhaps all, except the murderers and the 
grieved disciples, feel an unaccounta^'^le joy running in their 
veins, as if some vast shadow and burden had passed away 
from them and from the world — as if a danger of mysterious 
magnitude had been somehow escaped, and a deliverance 
somehow wrought of incalculable meaning. Even now, beau- 
tiful days sometimes stoop down upon us, like doves from 
heaven, and give us exquisite, though short-lived pleasure — 
in which earth appears " a pensive, but a happy place," the 
sky the dome of a temple, Eden recalled, and the millennium 
anticipated But surely this Sabbath, as it is floated softly 
and slowly to the west, seemed to be " covered with silver, 
and its feathers with yellow gold," and to wear on its wings 
the smile which had rested on the young world, when God 
pronounced it " very good." And were there not heard in 
the air, above the hill of Olives, or down the valley of Jeho- 
shaphat, or amid the trees of G-ethsemane^ snatches of ce- 
lestial music, words of mystic song, proclaiming that the 
jubilee of earth had awakened the sympathies and the re- 
sponses cf heaven, and that the " young-eyed cherubim" 
were rehearsing the melody they are to sing on the morrow 
in full chorus, when the scarcely-buried Saviour is to spring 
up, as from sleep, to honor, glory, and immortality ? 

But, without dwelling on the other poetical events of his 
history — on the morning when he rose early from the grave 
— on his mysterious and fluctuating sojourn for forty days 
on earth, after his resurrection (as if he loved to linger in 
and haunt that dear spot, and deferred his very glory to the 
last moment, for the sake of his disciples) — on that immortal 
journey to Emmaus — on his ascension far above all heavens, 
arising from the hill of Olives, with no chariot of fire, or 
horses of fire, but in his own native might and instinctive 
tendency upwards — on his entrance and his session at the 
right hand of God — we come to speak of the poetry which 
cleaves to those wondrous words which he has left behind 
him. 

The manner of Christ's life, as he uttered his parables 



POETRY OP THE GOSPELS. 



79 



and other sayings, was in the highest degree poetical. It 
was the life of a stranger on this earth, of a wanderer, of one 
who had no home but the house not made with hands, which 
he had himself built. Hence we identify his image with 
nature, and ever see him on lonely roads, midnight moun- 
tains, silent or stormy lakes, fields of corn, or the deep 
wildernesses of his country. Every step trode by the old 
seers, was retrode by him, as if to efface their fiery vestiges, 
and make the regions, over which they had swept like storms, 
green again. He was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel, 
but he more than once approached to the very boundaries of 
his allotted field. We find him, for instance, in the neigh- 
borhood of Tyre and Sidon, straying by a mightier sea than 
that of Tiberias, and lifting his eyes to a loftier summit than 
that of Tabor. " He must needs " see Lebanon, as well as 
pass through Samaria. His were not, indeed, journeys of 
sentiment, but of mercy ; and yet, why should he not have 
gazed with rapture upon the peaceful, the pure, and the lofty, 
in the works, while he did the will, of God ? This was, per- 
adventure, the chief source of his solace amid suffering and 
weariness. He was not recognized by men, but the lilies of 
the field looked up meaningly in his face, the "waters per- 
ceived him — they saw him well," the winds lingered amid his 
hair, the sunbeams smiled on his brow, the landscape from 
the summit seemed to crouch lovingly at his feet, and the 
stars from their far thrones to bend him down obeisance. 
He, and he alone, of all men, felt at home in nature, and able 
to see it, and call it " My Father's house." He felt not 
warmed by, but warming the sun — not walking in the light 
of, but enlightening the world and could look on its great 
orbs as but the " many mansions '^ for his spiritual seed. Of 
all men he only (mentally and morally) stood erect ^ and this 
divine uprightness it was which turned the world upside 
down. The poetical point of view of nature, is not that of 
distant admiration or of cold inquiry, it is that of sympathy, 
amounting to immersion ; the poet's soul is shed, like a 
drop, into creation ; but this process was never fully com- 
pleted, save in one — in him who uttered the Sermon on the 
Mount. 

Fancy has sometimes revolved the question, were nature 
to burst into words — were the blue sky to speak — what words 
would best translate its old smiling silence % To men bend- 



28o POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 

ing, and willing to bend, below its quiet surpassing grandeur, 
what sounds more cheering and cognate than were these — • 
'• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for t/ieirs is tJie kingdom of 
heaven ?'' These are the first words from the mount. The 
first recorded word of the Divine Man is a blessing ; and a 
blessing on those who feel their littleness, as the condition 
and element of their being, and a blessing which fills the 
void of the poor, humble heart with Heaven. Just as the 
sky seems to whisper — " Bend, but bend — learn, only learn 
— listen, but listen — and all mine are thine, and with galax- 
ies shall I crown thy lowly head." And as the beatitudes 
multiply, you feel more at every sentence that they are from 
the deep heart of the universe, and that this is God inter- 
preting himself Who but himself could have named that 
eye which can alone to eternity see him — the cleansed and 
filial heart ? " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God:' ^ 

Demonstrate a God to the atheist, or the worlding, or the j 
sensual ! Alas ! such persons never had, and may never ' 
have, a God, and how can they be conscious of him? God 
must either be a Father, or a fierce, overwhelming, Infinite ^ 
TJiought — a justice and a terror — crushing his enemies under \ 
tlieir own one-sided idea of him. But the pure and warm j 
heart feels the Father, like a sweet scent in the evening air ^ 
— like the presence of a friend in the dark twilight room — ! 
like a melody entering within and sweetening all the soul, \ 
which has leaped half-way to meet it. \ 

The heart here, the Father yonder, and the universe of \ 
man and matter as the meeting-place between them, is the ■ 
whole scope and the whole poetry of the Sermon on the ; 
Mount. The preacher shears off all the superfluities and ] 
externals of worship and of action, that he may show, in its \ 
naked simplicity, the communion which takes place between ■ 
the heart as worshipper, and God as hearer. The righteous- \ 
ness he inculcates must exceed that " of the Scribes and i 
the Pharisees." The man who hates his brother, or calls \ 
him " Baca," is a murderer in seed. Adultery first lurks 
and swelters in the heart. Oaths are but big sounds ; the * 
inner feelings are better represented by " Yea, yea, nay, nay." ; 
That love which resides within will walk through the world, \ 
as men walk through a gallery of pictures, losing and admir .1 
ing, and expecting no return. The giving of alms must be \ 



POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 



283 



secret. The sweetest prayer will be solitary and short. One 
must fast, too, as if he fasted not. The enduring treasures 
must be laid up within. Righteousness must be sought be- 
fore, and as inclusive of, all things ; life is more precious 
than all the means of it. The examination and correction 
of faults must begin at home. Prayer, if issuing from the 
heart, is all-powerful. The essence of the law and prophets 
lies in doing to others as we would have others do to us. 
Having neglected the inner life, the majority have gone to 
ruin, even while following fully and devotedly external forms 
of faith and worship. The heart must, at the same time, be 
known by its fruits. It is only the good worker that shall 
enter the heavenly kingdom. These truths, in fine, acted 
upon — those precepts from the Mount, heard and done — be- 
come a rock of absolute safety, while all besides is sand now, 
and sea hereafter. 

Such is, in substance, this sermon. It includes uncon- 
sciously all theology and all morals, and is invested, besides, 
with the beauty of imagery — theology — for what do we know, 
or can we ever know, of (xod, but that he is " our Father in 
heaven," that he accepts our heart-worship, forgives our debts, 
and hears our earnest prayers — morals, for as all sin lies in 
selfishness, all virtue lies in losing our petty identity in the 
great river of the species, which flows into the ocean of God ; 
and as to imagery, how many natural objects — the salt of the 
sea, the lilies of the valley, the thorns of the wilderness, the 
trees of the field, the hairs of the head, the rocks of the 
mountain, and the sand of the sea-shore — combine to explain 
and to beautify the deep lessons conveyed ! Here is, verily, 
the model — long sought else\;here in vain — of a " perfect 
sermon," which ought to speak of God and of man in words 
and figures borrowed from that beautiful creation, which lies 
between, which adumbrates the former to the latter, and en- 
ables the latter to glorify at once the works and the Author, 
" Here is Christianity," we exclaim, and remember with 
pleasure the experiences of a gifted spirit, who was wont, 
after attending certain meetings, professedly meant to revive 
religion, but full of degrading rant and vain contortion, to 
re-assure his spirit in its belief of Jesus by reading, himself 
alone, the Sermon on the Mount. 

Fitly does the Teacher close his sermon by the parable of 
the two men, the two houses, and the two foundations. The 



284 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 

two great classes of mankind are but too easily represented 
bj two individuals — the selfish and the spiritual man — the 
one building perhaps a palace on the sand, the other perhaps 
a cottage on the rock, and each receiving his appropriate 
reward. The palace (be it a poem, or a victory, or a grand 
discovery), if the sand of selfishness be beneath it, sinks 
inevitably, and men, angels, demons, and God, say of it — 
" Grreat is its fall." The cottage (perhaps one humble heart, 
united by the builder to Jesus — perhaps figured aptly by a 
cup of cold water given to a disciple, or by a dying word, like 
that of the penitent thief ) stands securer far than the sun, and 
shall shine when he is darkness. At the close of this parable of 
parables, do we not see evil gone down, and lost in the abyss ; 
while good remains imperishable upon its rock of ages ? 

The Sermon on the Mount represents faithfully the two 
principal features of Christ's preaching — its didactic basis, 
and the parabolic beauty which shone above. In it we find 
those two qualities united ; in his after discourses we find 
them more in separation. In the Gospel of Luke, for in- 
stance, we have little else than parables proceeding from his 
lips ; in John, his didacticism takes a higher flight than in 
Matthew, and wears a celestial lustre upon her wings. In 
the Sermon on the Mount, he had soared high above Sinai; 
but in the closing discourse to his disciples, recorded in John, 
he leaves us, like the men of Galilee, " standing and gazing 
up into heaven." In his Sermon on the Mount, he had dwelt 
chiefly upon the general relations of men to the Father ; the 
discourse in John illustrates rather his own special and 
transcendent connection with him. 

Let us glance, first, at his parables, which are a poetry in 
themselves. Truth, half betrayed in beauty, half shrouded 
in mystery, is the essence of a parable. It is the truth 
wishing to be loved, ere she ventures forth to be worshipped 
and obeyed. The multitude of Christ's parables is not so 
wonderful as their variety, their beauty, their brevity, and the 
sweet or fearful pictures which they paint at once and for 
ever upon the soul. Here we see the good Samaritan riding 
toward his inn, with his wounded brother before him. There, 
lingeringly, doubtingly, like a truant boy at evening, returns 
the prodigal son to his father, whose arms, at his threshold, 
stretched out, seem wishing for wings to expedite the joyous 
meeting. In that field stalks the sower, graver than sowers 



POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 



28s 



are wont to be in the merry season of spring. On the oppo- 
site side, the fisherman, with joyful face, is drawing ashore 
his heavy-laden net. With yet keener ecstasy depicted in 
his countenance, you see the merchantman lighting on a pearl 
of pearls, while across from him is the treasure-finder, with 
circumspective and fearful looks, hiding his precious prize. 
And. lo ! how, under the dim canopy of night, shadowing the 
barely-budding field of wheat, steals a crooked and winged 
figure, trembling lest the very darkness see him — tlie enemy 
scattering tares in huddled abundance among the wheat. 
The morning comes ; but, while revealing the rank tares 
growing among the good seed, it reveals also the large mus- 
tard-tree which has shot up with incredible swiftness, " so 
that the fowls of the air do build in the branches thereof." 
Here you see a woman mixing leaven with her meal, till the 
whole lump is leavened ; and there another woman, sweeping 
the room, how fast yet intensely, for her lost piece of silver. 
There the servant of the marriage-host is compelling the 
wanderers from the hedges to come in, his face all glowing 
with amiable anger and kindly coercion ; and yonder, in the 
distance, with anxious eye and crook in his hand, hies the 
shepherd into the twilight desert, in search of his " lost sheep." 
And, hark ! as the marriage feast has begun, and the song of 
holy merriment is just rising on the evening air, there comes 
a voice, strangely concerting with it, hollow as the grave — a 
whispered thunder. It is the voice of Dives, saying — 
" Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, 
that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my 
tongue, for I am tormented in this flamed 

In such figures, Jesus has exhausted life, earth, eternity. 
The small seed from which all greatness buds ; the supreme 
beauty of compassion, even when found in foreign and unen- 
lightened breasts; the touch of nature, making the whole 
world kin ; the joy and glory connected with the recovery 
of the lost ; the unseen but awfully real agency of evil coun- 
teracting good in this present world ; the all-embracing and 
painstaking love of the Great Host and Father ; the fact 
that men must sometimes be driven to their own happiness ; 
the dignity and value of a lost soul, or a loot world ; the 
feelings connected with finding a truth, and wrapping it up 
as too precious or bright for the present time ; the yearning 
of the Father over his vagrant children, and his joy at their 
19 



286 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 

return ; the reception the Saviour was to receive when he 
came to save the lost ; the leap by which the laws of earth 
pass into the unseen world ; the sympathies of the departed 
with living men ; and the sufficiency and soleness of the 
means Grod has appointed ; — such are the fancy-wrought and 
fire-written lessons of the parables of Jesus Christ. 

The marriage of the highest truth and human interest 
was never so fully celebrated as here. Hence, while divines 
find those parables to sink into a profundity into which they 
cannot follow, children hang them up, like pictures, in their 
fancies and hearts. From them, too, has sprung an entire 
literature, including some of the master-pieces of modern 
genius. Dante's " Divina Comedia," Spencer's " Faery 
Queen," and Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," are the long- 
reverberated and eloquent echoes of the wayside words of 
the Divine Carpenter of Nazareth. 

" Divine," indeed ! for if any man doubt his claim to the 
title, let him pass from Christ's pictures of earth to his aspi- 
rations after heaven ; let him hear the musical pants of this 
great swimmer, as he is nearing, amid roughest water, the 
shores of eternity and his Father's bosom. The last words 
of Jesus are surcharged with feeling for his disciples, for- 
giveness to his enemies, and desire after renewed communion 
with his Father. His soul springs up, as he sees his Father's 
throne in view. Death dwindles as he looks onward. A 
smile of triumph rests, as by anticipation, upon his lips. " Be 
of good cheer : I have overcome the world." His last com- 
mand is, " that ye love one another ;" his last legacy is 
" peace." He is going to the Father, but leaving the Com- 
forter, and promising to return again ; and, ere going, he 
breaks out into a prayer which, ere it closes, seems to bind 
in one chain of glory earth and heaven, himself, his Father, 
and his people : " Thy glory which thou gavest me I have 
given them ; that they may be one, even as we are one. Fa- 
ther, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with 
me where I am ; that they may behold my glory." This 
prayer seems a specimen of his intercessory prayers in 
heaven. It is the first lifting up of that solemn voice which 
sweetens the air of Paradise — the first raising of those arms 
which brighten the very light which is inaccessible and full 
of glory. 

In considering these words, we are strongly impressed 



POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 



287 



with the feeling — this is the conscious link of the spiritual 
world — the living bond between the Father and his children. 
The Father can never on earth come nearer to us than him ; 
we can never get nearer than him to the Father. We know 
not what the eternal ages may develop, or how that myste- 
rious sentence, " Then shall the Son of Man also himself be 
subject unto him, that God may be All in All," may bear 
upon his future mediation ; but surely now he stands be- 
tween us and the beams of divine day, like an " Angel in the 
sun." There is no getting him out of the eye of the world. 
The poor sinner looks at him, and mourns, yet rejoices. The 
proud transgressor hates and foams, but cannot help looking 
at, and thinking of, Christ. The infidel, feeling him in his 
way, invents theory after theory, each trampling down each, 
to resolve him into clay or into mist ; but still he stands 
victorious and serene above them all, inscrutable as an 
enigma, vast as a Grod, and warm as a man. The fierce theo- 
retical dogmatist would seek to turn aside that smile, and 
fix it on the pages of his catechism and the men of his creed ; 
but, like summer sunlight, it scatters abroad, and '■ sprinkles 
many nations." Many look down, and strive to forget him ; 
some try to look above him, into supersolar regions ; but in 
vain. His image pursues them into the depths, or flics be- 
fore them into the heights of nature. In this age, only a 
few, even among those who disbelieve his claims, yell out 
faded blasphemies and foul calumnies against his name. 
More now of all kindreds and climes are beginning to wish 
this Angel to descend, and are expecting from him — and 
from him alone — the full solution of the dread mystery of 
man and the world. 

For why ? He only understands it. He has passed up 
every step of the ladder, from the child to the Grod, from the 
manger to the throne. He has felt the pulse of all being. 
He Ifstened to the hearts of harlots and of publicans, and 
heard humanity beating even there. He looked into the 
dim eyes of the poor, and saw therein the image of God. 
Even in devils he found out all that was left of good in their 
natures, when they confessed him to be the Son of God. 
While the long hair of the prostitute wiped his feet, which 
her tears had watered, the eye of the lunatic tarried, at his 
bidding, from its wild wanderings, and began to roll calmly 
around him. Herod became grave in his presence, Pilate 



288 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 

washed his hands from the shadow of his blood, Peter wept 
at his look, and Judas died at his recollection. Angels 
ministered to him, or sung his praise ; the grave was ashamed 
of hiding his dust ; earth threw his ransomed body up to 
heaven ; and heaven sent forth all its guards, and opened all 
its gates, to receive him into its bosom, where it shall retain 
him till the times of the restitution of all things. 

Thus faintly have we sought to depict the character and 
eloquence of Jesus. Scripture writers did not, nor needed 
to do it. They never say, in so many words, Christ was very 
eloquent, very wise, very humble, very merciful, or very holy. 
But they record his Sermon on the Mount ; they show him 
taking the Pharisees in their own snare ; they register his 
tears at the tomb of Lazarus ; they paint the confusion of 
the witnesses, who came, but could not bear testimony against 
him ; and they tell of his washing his disciples' feet. We 
have, alas ! no new facts to record of him ; and must say of 
that life so marvellous, yet humane, "It is finished." But 
even as the most splendid object in the sky is perpetually 
painted, yet always new, as the sun is unceasingly rendered 
back by the wave of ocean, the dewdrop, and the eye of man, so 
let it be with the Sun of Righteousness. Let his blessed image 
be reflected from page to page, each catching more fully than 
another some aspect of his glory, till he shall himself stand 
before the trembling mirror of the earth, " as he is," and till 
'' every eye shall see him." Then, probably, it may be found 
that all the proud portraits which the genius of Taylor, and 
Harris, and Bousseau, and Groethe, has drawn of him, are not 
comparable with that cherished likeness of his face and na- 
ture which lies in the bosom of the lowly Christian, like a 
star in a deep-sunken well, the more glorious that it is soli- 
tary and seldom seen, for ever trembling, but never passing 
away. 

Note. — Since writing this chapter, we have read Dr. Channing's 
Life. We find in one of his letters two of our thoughts anticipated ; 
one. that of Christ's unconsciousness in working his miracles, and 
another, his superiorily to them. He says, " Miracle working was to 
him nothing, compared with moral energy." And this, he says, pro- 
duced his unconsciousness. We rather think that that was the result 
of the miraculous force stored up in him and which, in certain cir- 
cumstarices, as when it met with strong faith, came forth freely and 
irresistibly, as water to the diviner's rod. or perspiration to the noon- 
day sun. But it was not because it came out so spontaneously that 



m^t^ 



PAUL. 



291 



CHAPTEK Xiy 



PAUL. 

It was asked of old time, " Is Saul also among the prophets?" 
it may be asked now, is Paul also among the poets 1 Won- 
derful as this is, it is no less certain. A poet of the first 
order Paul was, if force of thought, strength of feeling, 
power of imagination (without an atom of fancy), heaving 
ardor of eloquence, and energy of language, go to constitute 
a poet. 

The degree in which Paul possesses the logical faculty, 
the extreme vigor and keenness of his understanding, have 
blinded many to the power of his genius, just as, on the con- 
trary, with many writers, the luxuriance and splendor of 
their imagination have veiled from common critical view the 
subtlety and strength of their insight. In the one case, the 
eye of the cherub is so piercing, that we never look up to 
the wings; in the other, the wings are so vast and over- 
shadowing, that they conceal from us the eye. The want of 
fancy, besides, which we have indicated, and the severe re- 
straint in which he usually holds his imagination, till his in- 
tellectual processes are complete, have aided the general im- 
pression that Paul, though acute always, and often eloquent, 
is never poetical. Whereas, in fact, his logic is but the 
buckler on his arm, behind which you see the ardent eyes 
and the glittering breastplate of a poet-hero, worthy of 
mingling with the highest chivalry of ancient song, with 
Isaiah and Ezekiel, with Habakkuk and with Joel. It was 
a poet's eye, although glaring and bloodshot, that witnessed 
the first martyrdom — a poet's eye that was smote into blind- 
ness on the way to Damascus — that looked from Mars Hill, 
over that transcendent landscape and motley audience — and 

Christ rated it low, but because its effects were the mere scaffolding 
to his ulterior purpose. We advise every one to read the last thirty 
pages of the second volume of Channing's Life. They constitute the 
finest apology for the reality of Christ Ave ever read, .and show deep 
insight into his nature. They show that HalVs definition of Uni- 
tarianism— that its whole secret consists in thinking meanly of Christ 
— did not at least apply to Charming. 



292 



PAUL. 



that, caught up to Paradise, saw the visions of God, and, 
according to some, was ever afterwards weakened by the 
blaze. He nearly fulfilled to the letter the words since fig- 
uratively applied to Milton, who 

" Passed the bounds of flaming space, 
Where angels tremble as they gaze, 
"Who saw, and blasted by the excess of light, 
Closed his eyes in endless night." 

In Paul, first, we find art arrested and pressed into the 
service of Christianity — a conscious and cultured intellect 
devoting itself to plead the cause of heaven — the genius of 
the east, united with the acuteness and consecutive thought 
which distinguish the European mind. The utterances of 
the old prophets, of Jesus too, and of John, are artless as the 
words of a child. Even the loftiest and longest raptures of 
Isaiah are as destitute oijunct/ura as the Proverbs of Solomon; 
the difference only is, that while Solomon walks calmly from 
stepping-stone to stepping-stone, Isaiah leaps from rock to rock, 
and peak to peak. The words of Jesus, when mild, come 
forth disconnected as a stream of smiles — when terrible, are 
successive, but separate, flashes of forked lightning. Paul 
alone, of Scripture writers, aims at composition in his sys- 
tem, his description, and his style. His system is a dark but 
rounded orb ; in description, he essays to group objects to- 
gether; and the style of the chief part of his principal 
Epistles is an intertangled chain. We might conceive that 
meeting on the Damascene way to typify the contrast be- 
tween intuition and analysis — the divine Intuitionist looking 
down from above — the baffled but mighty analyst falling like 
a dead man at his feet, to rise, however, and to unite in him- 
self a large portion of both powers, to blend the learning 
and logic of Gamaliel, the schoolmaster, with the light 
streaming from the face of Jesus, the child. 

Here we see how exquisitely wise was the selection of 
Paul, at that point of the history of the new religion, to be- 
come its ambassador to the west. The first enthusiasm of 
its youth was fading, and the power of the first impulse from 
on high had necessarily, in some measure, spent itself The 
miraculous glory surrounding its head was destined gradu- 
ally to decay. That it might, nevertheless, continue to live 
and spread — that it might pass in its power into the midst of 



PAUL. 



293 



those cultivated countries, where it was sure at every step to 
be challenged, it must assume an elaborate shape, and find a 
learned advocate. A Paul was needed ; and a Paul was 
found, nay, enlisted into the service, not by any subaltern 
ofl&cer, but by the Great Captain himself. There is no evi- 
dence that he was deeply read in Grecian lore — had he been 
so, we should have had thirty instead of three quotations 
from the Pagan poets ; nor that he was ever trained to the 
study of the Grecian dialectics ; but his intellect, naturally 
acute to subtlety, was subjected to the somewhat severely 
intellectual processes which then abounded in the Jewish 
schools ; and he was thus qualified to reason and wind a way 
for Christianity, where the force of miracle, or the instant 
lightning of intuitive feeling, were not at hand to cut and 
cleave it. The religion of Jesus passed through the East 
like a ray through an unrefracting medium ; when it came 
westward, it found an atmosphere to be penetrated, and a 
Pauline power to penetrate it by bending, yet remaining pure 
as a sunbeam. 

When Paul arose, Christianity was in a state of disarray. 
The manna was fallen from heaven, and lay white on the 
ground, but it was not gathered nor condensed. Had it been 
designed for a partial or temporary purpose, this had been 
comparatively of little importance. But, as it was meant to 
tarry till the master should come, it was necessary that it 
should assume a shape so symmetrical, and a consistence so 
great, that no sun of civilization or keen inquiry could melt 
it. For this purpose, Paul was stopped, and struck down, 
and blinded, and raised up, and cured, and taken like his 
master into the wilderness (of Arabia), and brought back, 
and commissioned, and preserved, and sent to Athens and to 
Rome, and inspired with those dark yet wondrous Epistles 
of his — parts of which seem to preserve certain great half- 
utterable truths in frosty till the final spring shall come. 

Some even of Paul's friends have regretted the analytical 
cast which the intuitional religion of the " Carpenter" took 
from his hands, and have said, "not Paul, but Jesus." There 
are several reasons why we cannot concur with them in this. 
First, The intuitional element was not lost, it was only ex- 
hibited in another form : the manna was that which had fallen 
from heaven ; it was only formed into cakes by a master hand. 
Secondly, Intuitional impression can never circulate widely 



294 PAUL. 

nor long, unless it thus be condensed ; bullion is sluggish — ■ 
money goes ; heaps of manna sometimes stank — the small 
cakes refreshed and revived the eaters. Even Christ's words 
required Paul's emphasis and accentuation. Thirdly, All 
genuine intuition and inspiration seek, and at last find, an 
artistic or systematic expression. Nature herself struggles 
after unity, and after completeness of beauty. Every flower 
seems arrested on its way to higher elegance and more 
ethereal hues. Every tree seems stretching out its branches 
in quest of some yet rounder termination. So with thought 
of all varieties of excellence and of truth. The severely 
logical desires a vesture of beauty. The beautifully imagi- 
native desires a clothing of clay. Not always is either ap- 
petency granted. But no religion, at least, can have a per- 
manent place and power in the world, unless it appeal alike 
to the ideal and the artistic, display the eternal spirit, and 
assume the earthly shape. To Christianity, Jesus supplied 
the one, and Paul the other. Fourthly, Such a descent^ as it 
may be called, from Jesus the child, to Paul the logician, was 
necessary, both as an interpretation of that part of Chris- 
tianity which was destined to endure, and as a substitute for 
that part of it doomed to weaken and wane. Christianity, 
the spiritual power, was to remain ; but Christianity, the mi- 
raculous force, was to decline. Paul's system was to contain 
the essence of the one, and to conserve so much as was con- 
servable of the relict influence of the other. Fifthly, As in 
part remarked before, it was of importance to Christianity 
that it should triumph over a man of culture. Simple fisher- 
men it had in plenty ; but it needed to show how it could 
subdue an intellectual and educated man ; how it should, in 
the process, reconcile the warring elements in his nature, and 
bring to him what no study could ever bring — peace amid 
his majestic powers. In other words, the intellectual pro- 
gress of the age and the new religion must be reconciled, 
and they were reconciled accordingly ; not merely in a com- 
liact and complete theory^ but i7i a living man — and that 
man was Paul. This^ too^ is the grea \ 2)robl€m of the present 
time. To have our mental progress reconciled with Chris- 
tianity, not only by such an elaborate system as Coleridge 
died in building, but also by a living synthesis — a breathing 
bridge — the new Chalmers of the new time, forming in him- 
self the herald of the mightier one, whose sandals even hfl 



PAUL. 



295 



sliall be unworthy to unloose : this is what the wiser of Chris- 
tians, and the more devout of philosophers, are at present 
longing and panting to see. 

Of such a man, who shall lay the ground-plan ? We can- 
not dscribe him into existence. Yet we may state certain 
qualities which the Paul of the present must possess, as the 
Paul of a former day did. He must be a converted man. 
That is, he must have seen, and in a blaze of blinding light, 
ihe vanity and evil, the folly and madness, of the worldly 
or selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested 
or Christian life. He must, in a glare of illumination, have 
beheld himself, with all his faculties and accomplishments, as 
but a garlanded victim, to be sacrificed for man and to God. 
This Paul learned on the way to Damascus, and he acted 
ever afterwards on the lesson. He must be, again, a man 
who has gifts and accomplishments to sacrifice. He must be 
able to meet age on its own terms, and to talk to it in its own 
dialect. He must speak from between a double peak, from 
the height of a commanding intellect, and from that of a lofty 
mission. He must render it impossible for any one to look 
down upon him. The king himself may be, as we have called 
him, a divine and eternal child ; but the ambassador and her- 
ald must be, like Paul, a furnished man. He must, again, 
have undergone great struggles, been made perfect through 
suffering — perhaps fallen into many and grievous sins. He 
may have been years without hope, and without God, in 
the world. He may have entertained fierce, impure, and 
wasting passions, comparable to that rage which filled the 
heart of Saul of Tarsus. He may, unlike Saul, have sacri- 
ficed the letter as well as the spirit of the law. All these 
are only inverted qualifications for his great office. They 
prove him human — they evince experience — they secure in 
him, and for him„widest sympathies, and show him to pos- 
sess a fellow-feeling with our infirmities. We find, again, 
that the Paul of the past had a deep interest and love for 
his unbelieving brethren. They were counted as brethren, 
though they were unbelievers. He had been an unbeliever 
himself, and had been saved from unbelief by a special and 
marvellous interference. But there remained in him still a 
compassion for his brethren that were without. " Therefore," 
he says, " he had great heaviness and continual sorrow in his 
heart." The Paul of the present should have his heart dis- 



296 PAUL. 

tended by a similar emotion. We say not that he should 
have ever crossed the boundaries of unbelief, but he should 
have neared them. Unless he has neared them, in this dis- 
tracted time, it is clear that he has never thought at all. And 
although we could accept an angel who had only seen^ we can- 
not accept an apostle unless he has reflected, reasoned, doubt- 
ed, and then believed. And the man who has ever had deep 
and sincere doubt, will always afterwards regard it with inter- 
est and sympathy, as the tomb of his now risen and renewed 
being, and extend the sympathy to those who are still in- 
closed. A Paul disbelieved once, and pitied unbelief ever 
afterwards. A Coleridge doubted once, and became the spi- 
ritual father of many bewildered doubters. A Hall was Once 
a materialist, and buried (gravely and reverently) material- 
ism in his father's grave. An Arnold fought for years with 
doubts, and his last words were the words of Christ to doubt- 
ing Thomas. The thinker of the new era must, probably, 
have gained truth through yet darker avenues than theirs, and 
be able almost to bless them, because they led to a fuller and 
brighter day. The Paul of the past united reverence for the 
extant record with a keen perception of the wants of the new 
era, and the spirit of the new dispensation. Like Jesus, he 
said, " It hath been said unto you by them of old time ;" and 
then proceeded to express the old watchwords in the tones 
and the spirit of his own time. So must the Paul of the 
present. He must study philosophy, gaze on nature, and 
wait the descending inspiration, leaning the while over the 
page of the New Testament. Many, ignoring this as either 
never having been true, or as having become false (as if any 
truth could ever become a falsehood, any more than a lie a 
truth), are wasting their voice, like Baal's prophets, in crying 
to deaf elements, and a sleeping Pantheistic God. Others 
are going about our streets, like well-meaning but beslept 
watchmen, calling the hours of midnight, while the morning 
is paling their lanterns. Our Paul, while loving the " pale 
light of stars," must feel and announce the dawning of the day. 
Finally, the Paul of the present, thus endowed, thus edu- 
cated, and thus impressed, must address himself, as did the 
Paul of old, to form a version or system of Christianity, 
which may be reconciled, or at least appear reconcilable, to 
science and philosophy. He must elaborate from the Scrip- 
tures a mirror in which the great twofold Cosmos of matter 



PAUL. 



297 

and mind shall be seen " as it is." He must proclaim the 
approaching nuptials of spiritual beauty and philosophic 
truth. And without daring to prognosticate the entire 
course of thought which shall form the reconciling medium, 
we may express our notion of certain conditions which it 
must premise. First, in attempting such a synthesis, much 
which clings to, without beingj Christianity, must be sacrificed 
or ignored by the Christian thinker. He must give up party 
bias, narrow views, the inordinate esteem of creeds, the over- 
bearing influence of tradition, bibliolatry, or worship of that 
" letter which killeth," and all those views of doctrine which 
prove themselves false, by being opposed to the instincts and 
intuitions, alike of cultured and uncultured man — alike of 
peasant, analytic philosopher, and inspired poet. He must, 
too, for reasons good and sufficient, lay less stress on mira- 
cles as proofs than many do, but every thing on them as 
pledges which Christ is to redeem, and as specimens of his 
future supernatural interference. Secondly, He must take 
his firm stand upon the Book, believing it, as he believes the 
sun, on account of its superiority, its unwaning splendor, its 
power, its adaptation to man's present nature, intellect, and 
wants — an adaptation, like that of light, ever fixed, yet 
ever fluctuating, its simplicity, unity, and depth — because it 
is the record of man's deepest intuitions and earliest beliefs — 
because it is the best manual we have of genuine morality and 
devotion, and because its insight mounts ever and anon to pro- 
phetic inspiration, and to preternatural knowledge alike of 
the past and the future, and because, therefore, it can only 
go down or perish with the present system of things. At 
the same time, he will grant that the book is not perfect, nor 
ultimate, nor complete. Enough, that it fills its sphere and 
illuminates its cycle, till a brighter luminary shall dawn. 
Thirdly, He must mark strongly the many points of connec- 
tion between God's two revelations, while granting the strik- 
ing diversities. Admitting that there is a greater strength 
and quantity of evidence for Grod's works in nature, than for 
the Scriptures — that the Bible cannot be equalled in point 
of vastness and variety to the universe — that both are sur- 
rounded with deep difficulty and darkness — that the superi- 
ority of the Bible lies principally in the hope and aspiration 
it enkindles as to future discoveries, as well as in the present 
peace its doctrine of atonement communicates to the con- 



298 PAUL. 



science ; — he will see that both are mediatory in their charac- 
ter — that neither is final — that the difficulties of both spring 
from this imperfection of attitude — that both are transient — ■ 
that to love, or know, or believe either aright, a certain moral 
discipline is necessary — that except one become as a little 
child, he can in no wise enter either into the kingdom of na- 
ture or into the kingdom of heaven — and that both, springing 
from the same author, regulating the one the intellect, and 
the other the conscience of men, mediating in divers ways 
between man and the Infinite, must sooner or later form a 
conjunction. So long as the philosopher holds nature to 
be an ultimate fact — to be, in other words, God — he can 
never believe in the Bible, nor in the Bible's God. So long 
as the Christian believes the Bible to be aught else than a 
tent in which the Everlasting tabernacles for a night, he can 
never understand or love the universe or its Creator. Grant 
that both are ambassadors, destined to retire before their 
King, and it becomes plain that their difficulties and their 
opposition to each other must also disappear. Fourthly, He 
must inculcate the necessity of great concessions on both 
sides, ere there can be even an approach to a union. The 
philosopher must concede that Christianity is a fact, not 
a fable — a living power, not a dead imposture — that it arose 
and spread in the world so suddenly and irresistibly, as to 
imply a divine impulse — that its peculiar sway over the 
moral nature is as incontestable as that of the moon over the 
tides — that the belief in its supernatural claims is still ex- 
tant among many of the most cultured and intellectual of 
men — and that, whatever he may think of its external evi- 
dences, it is the one most beneficial emanation from God that 
ever shone on earth. The Christian, besides those earthy 
incrustations around the virgin gold of his faith, which we 
have said he must remove, should be prepared to admit that 
science and philosophy are valuable and beautiful in them- 
selves — that they are true, so far as they go — that their truth 
is independent of Scripture, and must stand or fall by its 
own evidence — that their real tendency is good — and that, 
like religion, they are " sprung from heaven." When such 
concessions, and others, are mutually made, and when, more- 
over, a spirit of forbearance and charity is interfused, the 
ground of difference will be marvellously narrowed, and the 
banns of the great bridal shall be published. Teach men to 



PAUL. 



299 



love^ and they will understand. Once the Christian learns 
to love, instead of fearing, he will accept philosophy. Once 
the philosopher is taught to love, instead of hating Christi- 
anity, he will cease to consider its loftiest pretensions as ab- 
surd, and its profoundest mysteries as formidable. Finally, 
The Reconciler must look forward for the full accomplish- 
ment of the work to the interference of supernatural power. 
He may publish the banns ; another shall celebrate the full 
marriage. At this hope, false philosophy may writhe its 
withered lips in scorn ; the true will remember, that there 
have been separate creations innumerable, implying distinct 
interferences of God, in the ages of geology ; and why 
should there not be another to make man again upright — to 
rear up the ruins of his brain, and the deeper ruins of his 
heart, into a shapely whole — to silence the jarring voices of 
this unsettled age by the musical thunder of a new word 
from heaven — to supplant usurped, feeble, or tyrannical au- 
thority, by a solitary throne, the " stone cut out of the 
mountain without hands" and to melt down philosophy and 
faith into the one blaze of vision 1 Not till then shall men see 
the full spectacle- of the magnificent apparition of the uni- 
vei'se^ with Christianity .^ like a divine halo, surrounding its 



Too far have we perhaps been tempted to stray, in search 
of the Paul of the present, from the Paul of the past. We 
return to him, for the purpose of depicting a few more of the 
many powers and peculiarities which distinguished his mul- 
tiform nature. The Man demands a more particular survey, 
ere we come to the characteristics of the Author. And let 
us mark the kindliness of that heart which lay below the 
sunlike splendor of his genius. This is written in his letter 
to Philemon ; it lives in his interview with the elders of 
Ephesus, and breaks out irrepressibly in many parts of his 
Epistles. It adds grace to his grandeur, and makes his doc- 
trine alike divine and humane. The power of a demigod is 
hardly more amiable than that of a demon, unless it be soft- 
ened by touches of nature, and mellowed by the air of 
earth. A Paul too proud for tears had never turned the 
world upside down. But to " such an one as Paul the aged" 
asking such a question as " What mean ye to weep and to 
break mine heart ?" and wishing himself accursed for the sake 
of his unbelieving brethren, all hearts but the hardest are 
20 



300 PAUL. 

ready to capitulate. Paul's tears effected what his thunders, 
his learning, and his logic would not so quickly have done. 
Great as the difference between man and man, is that be- 
tween tear and tear. The tears of Isaiah must have been 
fiery and rainbow-beaming as his genius ; David's must have 
been mingled with blood ; Jeremiah's must have been copi- 
ous and soft as a woman's ; Ezekiel's must have been wild 
and terrible tears. Of those of Jesus, what can we say, save 
that the glory of his greatness and the mildness of his meek 
humanity must have met in every drop. And Paul's, doubt- 
less, were slow, quiet, and large, as his profound nature. 

An old poet has quaintly called Jesus " The first true gen- 
tleman that ever breathed." Paul's politeness, too, must not 
be overlooked, compounded as it was of dignity and defe- 
rence. It appeared in the mildness of the manner in which 
he delivered his most startling and shattering messages, both 
to Jews and heathens ; in his graceful salutations ; in his 
winning reproofs — the " excellent oil which did not break 
the head ;" in the delicacy of his allusions to his own claims 
and services ; and, above all, in the calm, self-possessed and 
manly attitude he assumed before the rulers of his people 
and the Roman authorities. In the language of Peter and 
John to their judges, there is an abruptness savoring of their 
rude fisherman life, and fitter for the rough echoes of the 
Lake of Galilee than for the tribunals of power. But Paul, 
while equally bold and decided, is far more gracious. He 
lowers his thunderbolt before his adversary ere he launches 
it. His shaft is " polished," as well as powerful. His words 
to King Agrippa — " I would to God, that not only thou, but 
also all that hear me this day, were both almost and alto- 
gether such as I am, except these bonds" — are the most chi- 
valric utterances recorded in history. An angel could not 
bend more gracefully, or assume an attitude of more exalted 
courtesy. And certain we are, that, had his sermon before 
Felix been preserved, it had been a new evidence of his per- 
fect politeness. No Nathan or John Knox-like downright 
directness in it. In his captive circumstances, this had been 
offensive. No saying, in so many words, '* Thou art the 
man !" (no pointing even with his finger or significant glance 
with his eye) ; but a grave, calm, impersonal argument on 
" righteousness, temperance, andjudgment to come," which, 
as it " sounded on its way," sounded the very soul of the go- 



PAUL. 



3^3 



fernor, and made him tremble, as if a cold hand from abaoe 
had been suddenly laid on his heart. Paul's sermon he felt 
to the core, trembled at, and shrank from, but no more re- 
sented than if he had read it in the pages of a dead author. 
Paul's eye might have increased his tremor, but could no 
more have excited his wrath than can those eyes in pictures, 
which seem to follow our every motion, and to read our very 
soul, excite us to resentment or reprisal. And here, again, 
we notice a quality fitting Paul to be the Apostle of the 
West. Having to stand before governors and kings, and the 
emperor himself, he must be able to stand with dignity, or 
with dignity to fall. 

In accordance with this, we find in Paul a curious union 
of prudence and impulse. He is the subtlest and the sin- 
cerest of men. Pure and mild as a planet, he has often a 
comet's winding course. Determined to know nothing but 
Christ and him crucified, he yet becomes " all things to all 
men." Yielding in circumstantials and to circumstances, on 
all essentials he is immovably firm, like those stones which 
an infant's finger can move, but no giant's arm can over- 
throw. It is not cringing subservience ; it is not a base and 
low policy, such as has frequently been exemplified by leaders 
in the Christian Church, who have deemed themselves petty 
Pauls, but have been only miserable caricatures of his outer 
features. It is the mere winding movement of a great river 
in calm, which, unlike a flood, does, not overbear natural or 
artificial bulwarks, but kisses, and circles, and saps them into 
subjection. Without enlarging on his other and obvious 
qualities (on some of which Hannah More has dilated with 
her usual good sense and comprehension), such as his dis- 
interestedness, balanced, however, by an intense feeling of 
his just rights and privileges ; his integrity ; his love to his 
kindred according to the flesh ; his modesty ; his thankful- 
ness ; his heavenly-mindedness ; his prayerfulness ; his un- 
wearied and almost superhuman activity ; the proud humility 
with which, again and again, he took up the tools of his old 
trade ; his condescension to men of low estate ; his respect 
for God in the authorities he had appointed ; his reverence 
for that system of Judaism which was old and fast vanishing 
away — for the very shell of that ark whence the Sche- 
kinah had gone up ; his thirst for heaven ; his calm and 
dignified expectation of the angel of death; — we pause 



3^4 



PAUL. 



at one point of his character, which is seldom noticed, 
we mean, his passion for Christ Jesus. This became 
the main feeling in the breast of the " persecutor/' He had 
a desire to depart and to be with Christ, Ti^ich was far better : 
" If bj any means I might attain unto the resurrection^^ — 
that is, to him who said, " I am the resurrection and the 
life." " I account all things but loss for the excellency of 
the knowledge of Christ Jesus." Every third sentence of 
his Epistles, indeed, gleams with the name and glory of Christ. 
His feeling amounts to fascination. One might fancy that 
the face he had seen on the way to Damascus had ever after- 
wards haunted his vision. It is not the distant throb of ad- 
miration, which he feels to Moses ; it is the panting of one 
full of love. The heart of him who had only seen Christ 
as " one born out of due time," seems to heave in emulation 
of John, who had lain in his bosom, and of Peter, who had 
been with him on the holy mount. The flame is fanned, too, 
by another motive. He had spent years in hating and curs- 
ing Christ. In order to compensate for the time thus fear- 
fully lost, there is a hurry in his affection — there is a flutter 
in his words of admiration — there is an anxiety to pour out 
his whole soul in love to Christ, as if economy of expression, 
measure of feeling, modification of tone, were treason to his 
claims. There is a determination — " I, the once bloody- 
minded Saul of Tarsus, shall be foremost, midst, and last, in 
proclaiming my love to him, whose faith I labored to destroy." 
It is beautiful to see Peter, John, and Paul, like three flames 
of holy fire, climbing higher and higher on the altar before 
the Crucified, and to see at last Paul's pointed column, out- 
soaring the rest, and becoming " chief among the first three." 
Was it for the sake of his aspiring and insatiable affection, 
that he was caught up to Paradise and to the third heavens'? 
We may not dilate on that mysterious vision, on where he 
was, on what he saw, on how long he was absent, on what 
words he heard, since he himself remained silent. But no 
incident in his history casts a richer light upon the peculiari- 
ties of his character, his reticence, his modesty, and his power 
of s.ubordinating all things to the practical purposes of his 
office. How calm the countenance, above which throbs a 
brain painted around with the visions of God ! How tacit 
and guarded the tongue, which might have tried, at least, to 
stammer out the deep utterances of the blest! How un- 



p-^^^- 305 

willing to take to himself superior honor on account of his 
strange transfiguration ! And, lest any should dream that 
he had recounted this trance merely to elevate himself to the 
rank of those who had been with Jesus in the chamber of 
Jairus, in the inner groves of Gethsemane, and on the mount, 
how careful and quick he is to point to the " thorn" which 
seemed to have been planted in his flesh in Paradise itself! 
and how cautious, too, he is, in not pronouncing — though 
probably his impression was strong — his judgment as to 
whether he had been in the body or out of the body when 
caught away ! No privilege, however peculiar, or elevation, 
however lofty, could move the iron firmness of his purpose, 
or intoxicate his strong and sober spirit. The great analyst 
remained calm and clear-eyed, even while he worshipped and 
wondered at the foot of the throne. 

In speaking of Paul's written eloquence, we must not 
forget that he was a speaker as well as a writer. It is cus- 
tomary to suppose his elocution bad, because certain Corin- 
thians said that his bodily presence was weak and his speech 
contemptible. But, first, this was the language of prejudice. 
Again, those who uttered it were not probably fair judges 
There were audiences who despised Foster — nay, who sneered 
at Chalmers and even Hall. " Wretched speaker," is a com- 
ment we have overheard when returning from hearing a very 
rare exhibition of intellectual power and genuine eloquence. 
There are three kinds of true eloquence : the eloquence of 
passion and sympathy, the eloquence of intellect, and the elo- 
quence of imagination. To the first of these all hearts re- 
spond ; the two last, of which Paul's was a compound, have 
only power upon selected spirits. And let us remember, that 
if the Corinthians despised Paul's oratory, the people of 
Lystra likened him to Mercury. Different speakers suit dif- 
ferent audiences. Flood failed in the British parliament ; Pitt 
would have failed in the Irish. Perhaps Paul found but once 
an audience fully prepared intellectually to hear him, at 
Athens, namely ; and the impression on their inner con- 
sciousness, if not on their outer ear, was evidently profound. 
" Weak," his bodily presence might seem to those who ex- 
pected in him a colossal reflection of his colossal purpose ; 
but often, as he warmed and enlarged with his theme, his 
pale thin cheek might flash with unearthly fire, his eye dart 
out lightningSj his small figure appear at once distended and 



306 PAUL. 

dignified, his tiny arm seem a horn of power, and his voice 
rise into keeping with the magnificence of the truths he 
uttered, and of the language in which he clothed them. 
Such transfigurations have been produced once and again by 
the sheer force of sympathy and earnestness (as in AVilber- 
force), where neither the inspiration of the Divinity nor the 
afflatus of the bard were present, and might surely be ex- 
pected and witnessed in Paul, when all four were there. 

To see him, as an orator, in a mood at once lofty and se- 
rene, let us stand beside him on Mars Hill, and contemplate 
the scene, the spectators, the speaker, and the speech. Mag- 
nificent, and fairy-seeming, as a dream, is that unequalled 
landscape. In the distance, are the old snow-crowned moun- 
tains, where gods were said to dwell, and whose hoary heads 
seem to smile down contempt upon the new system, and its 
solitary defender. Closer at hand, stretches away a breath- 
less ocean, doubling, by its glassy reflection, the look of eter- 
nity and of scorn which the mountains cast. Below, sleeps 
the " Eye of Greece," so broad and bright, with all its towers 
and temples, and with the hum of its evening talk and even- 
ing worship, rising up the still air. Slowly sinking toward 
the west, Apollo is taking leave of his beloved city, while, 
perhaps, one ray from his setting orb strikes upon the bare 
brow of the daring Jew who is about to assail his empire. 
The scene altogether, how solemn ! It is as if nature were 
interested, if not alarmed, and had become silent, to listen 
to some mysterious tidings. The spectators, who shall de- 
scribe, after Haphael has painted them ? Suffice it, that the 
elite of the vainest and the wisest people of the world, the 
most subtle of sophists, and the most eloquent of declaimers, 
are there ; that Paul must bear the snowy sneer of the Epi- 
curian, the statuesque derision of the Stoic, the rapt misty 
eye of the Academic, the blind and furious scowl of the su- 
perstitious rabble, the sharper and deeper malice lurking in 
the eye of the Jew, the anxious look of his own few but 
faithful friends, and the keen anatomic glance of the mere 
critic, collected as if into one massive, motley, shifting, yet 
still and sculptured face, which seems absolutely to circle 
him in, as it glares upon him. And before and within all 
this, there he stands, the tentmaker of Tarsus. Is he not 
ashamed or afraid to address the overwhelming audience ? 
Shrinks he not from the task ? Falters not his tongue ? 



PAUL. 307 

Gathers not his check crimson ? Ashamed ! Shall the arch- 
angel be ashamed when he comes forward, amid a silent uni- 
verse, to blow the blast that shall call the dead to judgment, 
dissolve the elements of nature, and awaken the fires of 
doom ? No more does Paul's voice falter, or do his limbs 
shake. He rises to the majesty of the scene. He fills, easily 
and amply, the great sphere which he finds around him. He 
feels the dignity of his position. He knows he has a mes- 
sage from the God who made that ocean, these mountains, and 
these heavens. The men of Athens are clamoring for some 
" new thing" — he has the latest news from the throne of God. 
They are worshipping the " unknown God" — it is his task to 
unveil his image, and show him shining in the face of Christ 
Jesus. Not (as Raphael represents him, in an attitude too 
impassioned for the speech, beneath its calm greatness) — not 
with raised and outspread arms, but with still, strong, de- 
monstrative finger uplifted, and eye meeting. Thermopylae- 
like, all those multitudinous visages, with their crowd of va- 
ried expression, does he stand, and pour out that oration, 
surpassing the orations whereby Pericles and Demosthenes 
" shook the Arsenal" — sweet as the eloquence of Plato, and 
awful as the thunder of Jove — condensing in its nine immor- 
tal sentences, all the primal truths of nature and of Chris- 
tianity : God, the One, the Unsearchable, the Creator, the 
Spirit, the Universal Ruler, Benefactor and Provider, the 
only Object of Worship, the Father of Man, and his Former 
of One Blood, the Merciful, the All-Present, the Hearer of 
Prayer, the Ordainer and Raiser from the Dead of Jesus, 
and the Judge of all the Earth upon the Great Day ; and at 
the close of which, first a silence, deeper than that which 
made them, " all ear," and then a murmur, loud, conflicting, 
and innumerous as that of ocean's waves, attest its power ; 
while, lo ! as some are mocking, and others saying, " We will 
hear thee again of this matter," the speaker seems to sink 
down, and melt away. The cloud has scattered its thunder- 
rain, and has to them disappeared for ever. 

This speech on Mars Hill is as calm as it is comprehen- 
sive. But, throughout his Epistles, there are scattered pas- 
sages, in which his spirit is hurried along, as by a mighty 
rushing wind, into vehement and passionate rapture, Such 
enthusiasms never arise till his trains of thought are finished. 
And we are sometimes tempted to imagine that they have 



308 PAUL. 

been longed for as impatiently by the writer, as they are 
often by the uninitiated reader. From the difficult, although 
needful, task of reconciling the Jewish with the Christian 
dispensation, or of explaining his own conduct to the babes 
and sucklings of the churches he had planted, Paul, even 
Paul the aged, the persecuted, the expected and expectant of 
Nejo's sword, springs up exulting, into the broad and lofty 
fields of common Christian hope and joy. In this mood it 
is that he hushes the groanings of the creation, amid the re- 
sounding song, " Who shall separate us from the love of 
Christ ? we are in all things more than conquerors, through 
him that loved us ;" that while underrating in comparison of 
love even angels' tongues, he praises it with more than an 
angel's eloquence ; that he sets the doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion to solemn music ; that he shouts pagans over the victo- 
ries of faith ; and that he paints now the cloud of witnesses, 
now the scene at Sinai, and again the fiery coming of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Such passages afi"ect you more from the 
deep disquisitions which precede, and the close and cogent 
practical lessons which follow them. 

What strikes us principally about these disquisitions of 
Paul, and about his raptures — the two out of the three parts 
of which his Epistles consist — is a certain air of struggle and 
eflfort they both exhibit. His argument has sometimes the 
eagerness and the indistinctness of one pled in a dream. 
Language yields often below his strong steps. His eloquence 
labors to express conceptions which seem inexpressible. 
His feeling, too, is only half uttered, and only half realized. 
The powers of Greek are tasked in such phrases as Ka3' 
vTrep^oXrjv eis vnep^oXrjv, but tasked in vain. Were it not that 
his mouth seemed shut, as by an oath, against all betrayal of 
the particulars of his vision, we might suppose him now and 
then uttering snatches of those mystic strains he had heard 
in Paradise, and was able on earth to remember, but not to 
understand or explain. These are his " sayings, hard to be 
understood," of which Peter speaks, and over which we see 
still many mortal, and many immortal, brows bending in 
eagerness ; for even unto " t/iese things do the angels desire 
to look." 

Three subjects of wonder — for with Paul, as with all 
writers of the highest class, criticism soon fades into wonder 
— remain ; one is the minute practical bearing of his conclu- 



PAUL. 



309 



sions. After having sounded depths, which may be the fear 
of cherubims, and soared to heights, where they stand, with 
faces veiled, and with heads whence the crowns have been 
cast away, he turns round, without any loss of dignity or 
feeling of degradation, to give careful counsels to the hum- 
blest of saints ; to " salute Tryphena and Tryphosa ;" to re- 
member a poor female slave ; to inquire about the cloak and 
parchments he had left at Troas; and to immortalize in 
ignominy Alexander a coppersmith, henceforth tlie copper- 
smith for evermore. The golden head of the great man 
often ends in feet of miry clay, at once clumsy and foul ; but 
Paul's subtle power is equally diffused down his whole nature 
— majestic on all great, he is mindful of all little things. 
The second marvel is the small compass in which his Epistles 
lie. The longest of them are short. There is not a day but 
letters, longer than those to the Romans or the Hebrews, 
are passing from country to country, and city to city. His 
letter to Philemon is a mere card. And yet, round these 
little notes, piles of commentaries have darkened ; from them, 
as from a point of separation, entire sects have diverged * 
over them, alas ! blood has been spilled ; and in them, lie 
mysteries, the very edge of which has hardly yet transpired. 
Of what series of letters out of Scripture, but these, can the 
half of this be said? And the power thus lodged in them, 
what can we call it, if we call it not divine ? No charlatan, 
no fanatic, no pedant, no mere genius, could, by such brief 
touches, have so roused the "majestic world." 

For mark, these letters, while making no ^pretensions to 
literary merit, while recording no new miracles, do announce 
themselves as from the Lord, and do testify to the superna- 
tural character of Jesus Christ, did therefore commit their 
credit, and that of their author, to the entire claims of Chris- 
tianity, and expose themselves to severe tests, and to the 
keenest scrutiny. And it is because they came forth from 
this triumphantly, and made the prejudiced confess their 
truth, and feel their power, that they now live and shine, as 
though written in stars upon the page of the heavens. 

Our third wonder is their variety of subject, and tone, 
and merit. The idea of Paul, indeed, throughout all his 
writings, is the same. It is that of the largeness of Chris- 
tianity, as compared with the law of Moses, and its unity and 
holiness, when contrasted with heathenism. It may be ex- 



3IO 



PAUL. 



pressed in one of the sentences uttered by him from Mars 
Hill : — " God (the one spirit) has made of one blood all na- 
tions that dwell upon the face of the earth, and now com- 
mandeth all men every where to repent." His difficulties, 
in enforcing this great compound idea, arise from his doctrine 
of a special divine love, and from the prejudices of Judaizing 
believers ; and to meet those difficulties, all the energies of 
his intellect are bent. He seeks to bring the tabernacle, on 
the one hand, with its worshippers, but without its temporary 
rites, and the heathen worshippers, on the other, without 
their idols, under the reconciling rainbow of the covenant. 
But, while ever pursuing this master-thought, he seeks it 
through a great variety of paths. And hence monotony, 
always a literary sin of magnitude, attaches not at all to his 
Epistles. Not one is a duplicate of another. His principal 
object in the Romans is to level Jew and Grentile in one dust, 
that he may first surprise them into one salvation, and then, 
by the strong force of gratitude, " conclude," or shut them all 
up into one holy obedience. In the Hebrews, it is to show 
the unity in diversity, and the diversity in unity, of the 
two systems of Judaism and Christianity, which he does by 
a comparison, so subtle, yet so clear and candid, that even 
prejudice, ere the close, is prepared to exult with him in his 
trimphant preference of the hill Sion, to the faded fires and 
deadened thunders of the " Mount that might be touched." 
In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, he plunges into the 
thick of Christian duty, into questions of casuistry, into 
minute practical details, gathering them all along with him 
as he rushes on to the grand climax of the Resurrection, 
with its prospective and retrospective bearings upon personal 
holiness, till his call to Corinthian backsliders seems to thun- 
der through the last trump. And so with his other letters. 
In some of them, his chief purpose is to proclaim the glory 
of Christ. In others, it is to announce his Second Advent. 
In others, it is to magnify his own office, and to stir up the 
declining liberality of his correspondents. In others, it is to 
teach, warn, exhort, and encourage some of his leading chil- 
dren in the faith. And in one, the shortest and sweetest of 
all, written in a prison, but redolent of the virgin air of liber- 
ty, he condescends to baptize what had been a bond of harsh 
necessity and fear between two men, Philemon and Onesimus, 
into a bond of Christian brotherhood and love. 



PAUL. ^ J J 

The style, too, and tone are dififerent. Paul's " token," 
to be sure, " is in every Epistle." His presence proclaims 
itself by divers infallible marks : a kindly and earnest intro- 
duction, fervor of spirit, a close train of argument, winding 
on to end in a tail of fire, a digressive movement, short bursts 
of eloquence, sudden swells of devotion, audible yearnings of 
affection, strong and melting advices, minute remembrances, 
and a rich and effectual blessing at the close. But to some 
of his Epistles, the desci;iption and denunciation of sin give 
a dark oppressive grandeur. Witness the 1 st chapter of the 
Komans, which reminds us of God looking down upon the 
children of men, " to see if any did understand or know God," 
and beckoning on the deluge, as he says, " They are altogether 
become filthy ; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." 
Others sparkle with the light of immortality, and might have 
been penned by the finger of Paul's " Resurrection-body." 
Others glow with a deep, mild, autumnal lustre, as if reflected 
from the face of him he had seen as one born out of due time; 
they are full of Christ's love. Some, like the book of He- 
brews, rise into rich rhetoric, from intricate and laborious 
argument, and contain little that is personally characteristic. 
Others are simple as beatings of his heart. On one or two, 
the glory of the Second Advent lies so brightly, that the gulf 
of death is buried in the radiance ; in others, his own ap- 
proaching departure, with its circumstances of suffering and 
of triumph, fills the field of view ; and he says, '• I am now 
ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at 
hand." 

Such are the letters of Paul — letters which, like the 
works, large or small, of all the great, seem to descend from, 
instead of overtopping, the writer. And we try to complete 
the image of the man, by piecing together those broken frag- 
ments of his soul — broken, though all seeking and tending 
to unity. His life, after all, was the Poem ; he himself is 
"our Epistle." A wondrous life it was. Whether we view 
him, with low bent head and eager eye, at the feet of Gama- 
liel; or sitting near Stephen's stoning, disdaining to wet his 
hands, but wetting his soul in his blood ; or, under a more 
entire possession of his fanaticism, haling men and women 
to prison ; or, far before his comrades on the way to Damas- 
cus, panting like a hound when his scent of game is getting 
intolerable ; or lifting up one last furious glance through his 



312 PAUL. 

darkening eyes to the bright form and face of Jesus ; or led 
by the hand, the corpse of his former self, into the city, 
which had been waiting in panic for his coming ; or " rolling 
his eyes in vain to find the day," as Ananias enters ; or let 
down from the wall in a basket — the Christianity of the 
Western world suspended on the trembling rope ; or bashful 
and timid, when introduced to Cephas and the other pillars 
of the Church, who, in their turn, shrink at first from the 
Tiger of Tarsus, tamed though he be; or rending his gar- 
ments at Lystra, when they are preparing him divine honors ; 
or, with firm yet sorrowful look, parting with Barnabas at 
Antioch ; or in the prison, and after the earthquake, silent, 
unchained, still as marble, while the jailer leaps in trembling, 
to say, " What must I do to be saved V " or turning, with 
dignified resentment, from the impenitent Jews to the Gen- 
tiles ; or preaching in the upper chamber, Eutychus alive, 
through sleep and death ; or weeping at the ship's side at 
Miletus ; or standing on the stairs at Jerusalem, and beck- 
oning to an angry multitude ; or repelling the charge of 
madness before Festus, more by his look and his folded arms, 
than by his words ; or calm, as the figure at the ship's head, 
amid the terrors of the storm ; or shaking off the viper from 
his hand as if with the 

" Silent magnanimity of Nature and her God ; " 

or, in Rome, cherishing the chain like a garment ; or, with 
shackled arm, writing those words of God, " never to be 
bound ; " or confronting Nero, as Daniel did his lions in the 
den, and subduing him under the mere stress of soul; or, at 
last, yielding his head to the axe, and passing away to re- 
ceive the "Crown of Life" the Lord was to confer upon him ; 
wherever, and in whatever circumstances, Paul appears, his 
nature, like a sun, displays itself entire, in its intensity, its 
earnestness, its clear honesty, its incessant activity, its strug- 
gle to include the world in its grasp — but is shaded, as even- 
ing draws on, into milder hues, tenderer traits, and a holier 
effulgence. And though the light went down in darkness 
and blood, its relict radiance still shines upon us like the 
Parthenon, which seemed "carved out of an Athenian sun- 
set." Who that witnessed the persecutor on his way to Da- 
mascus, could have predicted that a noon of such torrid flame 
could so tenderly and divinely die; and that the name of 




'''j«ii^ 



PETEU AND JAMES. 



315 



Paul, when uttered now, should come to the Christian ear, 
as if carried on the breath of that " south wind which blew 
softly" while he and the Everlasting Gospel were sailing to- 
gether past the Cretan shore to Rome? 



CHAPTER XV. 



PETER AND JAMES. 



The poetry of Peter lies more in his character than in his 
writings, although both display its unequivocal presence. 
His impetuosity, his forwardness, his outspoken utterance, 
his mistakes and blunders, his want of tact, his familiarity 
with his master, his warm-heartedness, his simplicity of cha- 
racter, render him the Oliver Goldsmith of the New Testa- 
ment. It was owing to the childlike temperament of genius, 
blended with peculiar warmth of heart, that he on one occa- 
sion took Jesus aside, and began to rebuke him — that he 
said, on another, " thou shalt never wash my feet," but added 
immediately, on being told what it imported, " Lord, not my 
feet only, but my hands and my head" — that he muttered on 
the Mount of the Transfiguration, the supremely absurd 
words, spoken as if through a dream, " Let us make here 
three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for 
Elias" — that he drew his sword, and cut off the ear of Mal- 
chus — that he adventured on the water where Christ was 
walking — that he was the spokesman of the twelve, always 
ready, whether with sense or with kindly nonsense — and that 
his affectionate nature was grieved when Christ asked at him 
the third time, " Lovest thou me ?" With this temperament 
consort his faults ; his boldness breaks down when danger 
appears, as has often happened with men of the poetical tem- 
perament ; even in his denial of Christ, we see the fervor of 
the man — it is with oaths and curses^ for his very sin has an 
emphasis with it. And in fine keeping, too, with this, are 
the tears produced by Christ's look (Christ knew that for 
Peter a look was enough) — fast, fiery, bitter, and renewed, it 
is said, whenever he heard the cock crow, till his dying day. 
The change produced on Peter after the resurrection is 
21 



31 6 PETER AND JAMES. 



very singular. "We can scarce at first recognize the blun- 
derer on Transfiguration Hill, the sleeper in Gethsemane, 
the gravely-stupid and unconsciously impudent rebuker of 
Jesus, the open-mouthed grown-up child, in the solemn pre- 
sident of Pentecost, the bold declaimer at the " gate called 
Beautiful," the dignified captive cited before the rulers and 
the high priests, the minister of divine justice standing with 
the javelin of death over Ananias and Sapphira, the thau- 
maturgist, whose long evening shadow swept and cured sick 
streets, and before whom an angel opened the prison-doors, 
or the first ambassador to the Grentile world. But such a 
change has often been exemplified in persons of remarkable 
character, undey the pressure of peculiar circumstances, or 
through the force of great excitement. The story of the 
first Brutus, although probably a mythic fable, contains in it 
a wide truth, inclosing a hundred facts within it. " Call no 
man happy, till he is dead." Call no man stupid, till he be 
dead. Give the God within the man fair play, feed him 
with food convenient for him, and he may in due time pro- 
duce a divine progeny. The Atlantean burden will often 
awaken the Atlantean strength to bear it. In Peter — the for- 
ward, the rash, but the loving, the sincere, and the simple- 
minded — there slumbered a wisdom and sagacity, a fervor 
and an eloquence, which the first touch of the fiery tongue 
of Pentecost aroused into an undying flame, to become a 
light, a glory, and a defence around the infant Church. " De- 
sertion," which Foster has recorded as one grand ally to 
" decision of character," did its wonted work on him. Left 
by Christ foremost in the gap, a portion of Christ's spirit 
was bestowed on him, and his native faculty — ^great, but un- 
cultured — was effectually stirred up. Bemorse, too, had 
wrung his heart ; tears had been his burning baptism — and 
let those who have experienced tell how high the soul some- 
times springs to the sting of woe. The new birth of intellect, 
like the natural birth of man, and the new birth of God's 
Spirit, is frequently through pangs, as dear on reflection as 
they are dreadful in endurance. Nor had Peter not profited 
by his intercourse with Christ, during his stay on earth after 
the resurrection — the most interesting portion of which re- 
corded, is indeed a pathetic interview between the forgiving 
denier and his appeased and loving Lord. 

A more wonderful contrast than this, between Peter be- 



PETER AND JAMES. 



317 



fore and Peter after the resurrection, would be presented, 
did we accept the monstrous pre-eminence given to him by 
the Roman Catholic Church. We refer our readers, for a 
confutation of this error, to Isaac Barrow's unanswered and 
unanswerable treatise. But, besides, we confess that we 
cannot, without ludicrous emotions, think of poor, talking, 
imprudent, noble-hearted Peter of G-alilee, as the predeces- 
sor of the many proud, ambitious, scheming, mendacious, 
lewd, and thoroughly worldly and selfish Popes ; and are 
disposed to laugh still more loudly, when we find his esca- 
pades, his rash, unthinking words, his want of reticence and 
common sense, paraded by Papists (because in all these 
things he was first), as evidences that even then he had laid 
the foundation for his universal sway. Besides, did this one 
denial form a precedent for the infinite series of falsehoods 
that Church has since palmed on the world 1 Did his one 
stream of curses create that deep river of blasphemy, which 
has run down collaterally with the progress of the Roman 
Catholic faith 1 And how could the intrepid fisherman, with 
his '• coat ofi"" — the humble married man — recognize his suc- 
cessors in the pampered and purple-clad prelates — many of 
whom would have been ready to fling the price of all purga- 
tory into their courtesan's lap ? 

Great, unquestionably, as the change was upon Peter, 
after he had fallen and Christ had departed, much of his 
former character remained. His language before his judges 
breathes not a little of the unceremonious fisherman, although 
his attitude has become more dignified, and his eye be shi- 
ning with a Pentecostal fire. In his impetuous mission to 
the G-entiles, and in his sensitive and shrinking conduct when 
reproached for it — in all that line of action, for which Paul 
rebuked him to the face — we see the old man of warmth and 
weakness, ardent in temperament and narrow in views, rapid 
in advance and hasty in retreat. But that any jealousy for 
Paul ever entered Peter's mind, we cannot believe, or, if it 
did, it must have been the transient feeling of a child, who 
this moment weeps because her sister has received a prettier 
plaything than she, and is the next fondling her in her arms, 
and the next asleep in her bosom. 

Another change still was before Peter. His nature must 
at once soften and sublimate into its final shape — the shape 
in which his letters reveal and leave him. And that is a 



3i8 



PETER AND JAMES. 



form as lovely as it is majestic. The weakness of his youth 
is all gone, but its warmth remains. The Jewish prejudice, 
which survived his early days, and seemed somehow to befit 
the " apostle of the circumcision," has been exchanged for a 
catholic charity. On his brow, now overhung by silver hair, 
there meet the glories of the " holy mount," and those of 
the day of his departure, when he shall again see and em- 
brace his Lord. A tearful sublimity, as of a sun setting 
amid rainy clouds : yearning affection ; a fulness of evangel- 
ical statement ; an earnestness of practical admonition ; a 
perpetual and lingering reference to Christ ; a soft shade of 
sadness, at the prospect of the speedy disappearance of all 
earthly things, brightly relieved, however, by glimpses of his 
Lord's appearance — these, with some shadowy hints as to the 
intermediate state, and one picture of the Sodom-like sins of 
his day, form the constituent features of the two Epistles 
addressed by Peter to the " strangers scattered throughout 
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, and to 
those who have obtained like precious faith with us." Their 
style, like their spirit, is mild and sweet. Gravity, dignity, 
and grace — how unlike his hurried words of yore ! — distin- 
guish every line. Perhaps only in one passage do we see the 
old fire of the fisherman, unsoftened and unsubdued by trial, 
experience, or time We speak of the tremendous invec- 
tive, contained in the second chapter of the Second Epistle, 
against the false teachers of the time — one of four or five 
" burning coals of juniper," which, as if carried from the 
conflagrations of the old prophets, are thrown down here and 
there amid the more placid pages of the New Testament. 
Such are Christ's denunciation of the Pharisees, Paul's ac- 
count of the heathen world ; and beside, and almost identical 
with, Peter's invective, is the Epistle of Jude. Tkat^ in- 
deed, is but one red ray from the " wrath of the Lamb." 
But in Jude, as well as in Peter, poetry blends with, strange- 
ly beautifies, and clearly discovers the solemn purpose and 
terror of the prophetic strain. Behold the dreary cluster of 
metaphors, like a grove of various trees, all withered into 
the unity of death, of which Peter begins, and Jude closes, 
the collection. " These," says Peter, " are wells without water 
— clouds that are carried with a tempest ; to whom the mist 
of darkness is reserved for ever." " Clouds," says the yet 
sterner Jude, " they are without water, carried about of 



PETER AND JAMES. 



319 



winds ; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead,, 
plucked up by the roots ; raging waves of the sgvl. foaming 
out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved 
the blackness of darkness for ever." If this is imitation, it 
is the imitation of one animated by a kindred spirit, and 
possessing a still stronger and darker fancy. 

We have already defended such denunciations of sin, 
which are proper to both Testaments, although more fre- 
quently found in the Old. because they express, not private, 
but public resentment. While hearing them, we should say, 
'•It is the voice of a God, and not of a man." Indeed, their 
divinity is proved by their grandeur and daring. They are 
as beautiful as terrible. They are '• winged with red light- 
ning and impetuous rage." Passion there is in them, but it 
is sublimed, transfigured, purified ; approaching, in its power 
and justice, to that wrath on which the sun never goes down, 
and expressing, not the malignity of earth, but the '• malison 
of Heaven." Had we seen Paul, Peter, or Jude, inscribing 
those words of doom, or had we witnessed Christ's face dark- 
ening into the divinest sorrow, or heard his voice trembling 
in grief, as well as anger, we should have felt, in a higher 
degree, the emotion of the skeptic who had been reproaching 
Christ for his angry language to the Pharisees, but who, 
when Channing took up the book, and read it aloud, said — • 
'^ Oh ! if that, indeed, were the tone in which he spoke !" 
If tJiat were the tone ! Could not Jesus have eloquized his 
own words better than the good and noble-minded American ? 
Must not the Ithuriel rebuke have been pointed by the Ithu- 
riel tones, as well as by the Ithuriel countenance ? 

" So spake the cherub, and his grave rebuke, 
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace 
Invincible." 

Safer, after all, to reproach than to encounter such fires 
of righteous resistless anger, '• running along the ground." 
" Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way." 

Peter's distinction, both as a writer and man, is not so 
much fancy or intellect, as it is feeling. Running riot in his 
early history, fluctuating in his middle life, it is in his Epis- 
tles a calm and steady flame, burning heavenwards. Reject- 
ing, as probably a fiction, the story that he desired to be cru- 
cified with head downwards, lest he should have too much 



320 



PETER AND JAMES. 



honor in assuming the attitude of his denied and dying 
Lord, we may see in it a mythic emblem of his ultimate low- 
liness of spirit, as well as of the inversion of character which 
he underwent. It may represent, too, those sacrifices with- 
in sacrifices so common in that martyr age, in which men 
sought for fearful varieties of death — gloried in provoking 
their adversaries to invent new torments — made, at the least, 
no compromise with the last enemy, nor wished one of his 
beams of terror shorn — so certain were they, on the one hand, 
that their sufi'erings could never approach the measure of their 
Master's, and, on the other, that the reward was near, and 
unspeakably transcendent Crucified with inverted head, or 
impaled on iron stakes, or breast-deep in flames, it mattered 
not, since Paradise smiled, and Jesus beckoned, almost visi- 
bly beside them Let us pardon even the madness of that 
primitive rage for martyrdom, when we think of the primi- 
tive patience of hope and security of faith from which it sprung. 

It is impossible to contemplate Peter's works out of the 
checkered light of his character. It is different with James, 
whose character is only to be read in his Epistle, for all tra- 
ditionary notices of his history and habits seem uncertain. 
We know little of him, except that he was not the James 
who stood with Jesus on the Mount ; that he was known as 
James the Less ; and that many identify him with James, 
the Lord's brother, of whom Paul speaks. At the Council 
of Jerusalem, he acted, in some measure, as moderator ; and 
his letter, as well as his speech, shows him to have possessed 
qualities admirably adapting him for this office — wisdom, 
calmness, common sense, avoidance of extremes, a balanced 
intellect, and a determined will. 

The Epistle of James is the first and best homily extant. 
It is not what many would now call a " Gospel sermon" (but 
neither is the Sermon on the Mount). It has little doctrinal 
statement, and no consecutive argument ; it is a list of moral 
duties, inspirited by the earnestness with which they are 
urged, and beautified by the graphic and striking imagery in 
which the style is clothed. James is one of the most senten- 
tious, pointed, and terse of the New Testament authors. He 
reads like a modern. The edges of his sentences sparkle. 
His words are as "goads, and as nails." He reminds us 
more of Ecclesiastes, than of any other Scripture book. 
Paul's short sentences never occur till the close of his Epis- 



PETER AND JAMES. 



321 



ties, and remind us then of hurried pantings of the heart. 
They are like the poGtscripts of lovers. James's entire Epis- 
tle is composed of brief, glancing sentences, discovering the 
extreme liveliness and piercing directness of his intellect. 
Every word tells. How sharp and effective are such ex- 
pressions as — '• When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth 
sin ; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Faith, 
if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Show me thy 
faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by 
my works. Thou believest that there is one Grod ; thou doest 
well ; the devils also believe, and tremble. Is any among you 
afflicted? — Let him pray. Is any merry? — Let him sing 
psalms." 

In one of those sentences ('• the devils believe and trem- 
ble"), as well as in his quaint and powerful picture of the 
tongue, we find that very rare and somewhat fearful gift of 
irony winding and darkening into invective. What cool 
scorn and warm horror meet in the words, '■•believe^ and trem- 
ble I " How formidable does the " little member " he describes 
become, when it is tipped with the '' fire of hell ! " And in 
what slow successive thundrous words does he describe the 
"wisdom which is not from above," as " earthly, sensual, de- 
vilish ! " And upon the selfish rich he pours out a very tor- 
rent of burning gold, as if from the Lord of Sabaoth himself, 
into whose ears the cries of the reapers have entered. 

In fine, although we pronounce James rather an orator 
than a poet, yet there do occur some touches of genuine po- 
etic beauty, of which, in pursuing his swift rhetorical way, 
he is himself hardly conscious. " Let the rich," he says, 
" rejoice in that he is made low, because, as the flower of the 
grass, he shall pass away." For a moment, he follows its 
brief history : " The sun is no sooner risen with a burning 
heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof fall- 
eth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth : so also 
shall the rich man fade away in his ways" — "fade away," 
and yet "rejoice," inasmuch as, like the flower, whose bloom, 
savor, and pith have floated up to swell the broad-blown lily 
of day, his adversity withers in the prosperity of God. 
"What, again, is life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth 
for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Such flowers, 
indeed, are transplanted from the prophetic forests. There, 
under the proud cedars, they were overshadowed, and almost 



32 2 PETER AND JAMES. 

lost ; here, they bloom alone, and are the more lovely, that 
they seem to grow amid the fragments of the tables, which 
Moses, in his ire, strewed along the sides of Sinai — divine 
rubbish, left, as has not unfrequently been, in other senses, 
the case, by human wrath, but potent in its very powder. 

A little common sense often goes a great way in a mysti- 
fied and hollow world. How much mist does one sunbeam 
disperse ! James's few sentences — the law in powder — 
thrown out with decision, pointed by keen satire, and touched 
with terrific anger, have prevailed to destroy and disperse a 
thousand Antinomian delusions, and to redeem the perfect 
"law of liberty" from manifold charges of licentiousness. 
Even grant we, that, among the unhallowed multitude who 
have sought to reduce the standard of morals, Luther, like 
another Aaron, may have mingled, even he must down before 
the " Man with a word and a blow," the man Moses, imper- 
sonated with James, crying out — as his face's indignant 
crimson flashes through the glory which the Divine presence 
had left upon it, and his eye outbeams his face and outruns 
his hurrying feet, and his arms make a heave-ofi'ering of the 
fire-written tables — '' Wilt thou know, vain man, that faith 
without works is dead ? " 

Earnestness is a quality as old as the heart of man. Nor 
is the proclamation of it, as an essential and all-important 
element, merely of yesterday. It was preached — nay, cursed 
— into Israel's ears by Deborah, when she spake so bitterly 
of poor, trimming, tarrying, neutral Meroz, " which came not 
forth to the help of the Lord." It was asked, in thunder, 
from Carmel, by Elijah, as he said — " How long halt ye be- 
tween two opinions ?" It was proclaimed, through a calm 
louder than the thunder, by the Great Teacher himself, as 
he told the docile, well-behaved, money-loving weakling, in 
the Gospel, and in him, millions — " Go, sell all that thou 
hast, and take up thy cross, and follow me." And here, 
when faith in the Cross itself was retiring to rest in the 
upper rooms of speculative acquiescence, or traditionary ac- 
ceptance, comes James, stoutly resisting the retreat. His 
great demand is " life, action, fruit." Roughly, as one 
awakens those who are sleeping amid flames, does he shake 
the slumberers, and alarm the supine. But let those who 
have been taught by more modern prophets the value of 
earnestness remember, that James always admits the autho 



JOHN. 325 

rity of that faith whence he would expect virtue to spring. 
'• Faith is dead, being alone ;" in other words, it is not the 
Christian faith at all. Tkat is necessarily a living, fruit- 
bearing principle. And, strong as his hand is to tear away 
the subterfuges of the hypocrite, and bold as His spirit is to 
denounce every shade of inconsistency — every " sham" of 
that day, and although his tone against oppression and op- 
pressors crushes up into that of the old prophets, and his 
fourth and fifth chapters be in the very mood of Malachi — 
yet the whole tenor of his doctrine, and spirit, and language, 
substantiates his first and only title — " James, a servant of 
G-od, and of the Lord Jesus Christ.''^ 



CHAPTER XYI. 

JOHN. 

There is, or was till lately, extant a vulgar Bibliolatry, 
which would hardly admit of any preference being given to 
one Scripture writer over another, or of any comparison 
being instituted between its various authors. This was ab- 
surd, even on the ground which the doctrine of mechanical 
inspiration took. Suppose that the whole Bible came from 
God, in the same way in which nature is derived from him ; 
yet, who ever was afraid of preferring the Alps to the Apen- 
nines, or of comparing the Pacific with the Atlantic deep 1 
So comparisons were inevitable between writers of such 
various styles as Isaiah and the author of Ruth, the Psalms 
and the Historical Books ; and preferences to all but the 
mere slaves of a system, were as inevitable as comparisons. 

Noiv^ we need not be afraid to avow, that we have our 
favorites among Scripture writers, and that a leading favorite 
is John. There was '' one disciple whom Jesus loved ;" and 
we plead guilty to loving the ivriter supremely too. It has 
been supposed by some, that there was a certain resemblance 
between the countenance of John, and that of Jesus. We 
figure the same sweetness in the smile, the same silence of 
ineffable repose upon the brow, the same mild lustre in the 
eye. And, as long as John lived, he would renew to those 



326 JOHN. 



who had known the Saviour the impressions made by his 
transcendent beauty, for transcendently beautiful he surely 
was. But the resemblance extends to the features of his 
composition, as well as of his face. It seems Jesus who is 
still speaking to us. The babe-like simplicity, the artless- 
ness, the lisping out of the loftiest thoughts, the sweet un- 
dertone of utterance, the warm female-like tenderness and 
love, along with a certain divine dogmatism, of the Great 
Teacher, are all found in an inferior measure in the writings 
of his apostle. He has, too, a portion of that strange fami- 
liarity with divine depths which distinguished his Master, 
who speaks of them always as if he were lying in his Father's 
bosom. So John seems perfectly at home in heaven, and the 
stupendous subjects and scenery thereof He is not like 
Paul, " caught up to paradise," but walks like a native 
through its blessed clime. His face is flushed with the 
ardors of the eternal noon, and his style wears the glow of 
that celestial sunshine. He dips his pen in love — the pure 
and fervid love of heaven. Love-letters are his Epistles — 
the mere artless spillings of the heart — such letters as Christ 
might have written to the family at Bethany. Jesus is the 
great theme of John. His name perpetually occurs ; nay, 
he thinks so often of him, that he sometimes speaks of, with- 
out naming, him. Thus, " Beloved, now are we the sons of 
God ; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we 
know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him." "Be- 
cause that for his name's sake they went forth, taking no- 
thing of the Gentiles." In his Epistles, occurs the sentence 
of sentences, " God is love." Why is not this sentence sown 
in our gardens in living green ; framed and hung on the 
walls of our nurseries ; taught as the first sounds to little 
ones ? Why not call God love ? Why not change the name 
of our Deity ? Why not instruct children to answer, when 
asked who made you ? Love, the Father. Who redeems you? 
Love, the Son. Who sanctifies you 2 Love, the Holy Ghost 1 
Surely, on some day of balm did this golden word pass 
across the mind of the apostle, when, perhaps, pondering on 
the character, and recalling the face of Jesus, looking up to 
the glowing sky and landscape of the East, and feeling his 
own heart burning within him, he spread out the spark in 
his bosom, till it became a flame, encompassing the universe, 
and the great generalization leapt from his lips — " God is 



JOHN. 



327 



love." Complete as an epic, and immortal as complete, stands 
this poem sentence, insulated in its own mild glorj, and the 
cross of Jesus is below. 

Imagination, properly speaking, is not found in the Epis- 
tles of John. They are full of heart, of practical suggestion, 
of intuitive insight, and of grave, yet tender dignity. You 
see the aged and venerable saint seated among his spiritual 
children, and pouring out his rich simplicities of thought 
and feeling, while a tear now and then steals down his cheek. 
That passion for Christ, which was in John as well as in 
Paul, appears in the form of tranquil expectation. We shall 
soon " see him as he «s." The orator is seen as he is, when he 
has shot his soul into his entire audience, and is ruling them 
like himself. The warrior appears as he is, when lifting up 
his far-seen finger of command, and leading on the charge. 
The poet is seen as he is, when the fine frenzy of inspiration 
is in his eye. So Jesus shall be seen as he is, when he comes 
garlanded and girt for the judgment ; and when, blessed 
thought, his people shall be like him, for the first look of 
that wondrous face of his shall complete and eternize the 
begun similitude, and the angelic hosts, perceiving the resem- 
blance, seeing millions upon millions of reflected Christs, 
shall take up the cry, " Open ye the gates, that the righteous 
nation may enter in." 

In his Gospel, John takes a loftier and more daring 
flight. He leaps at once into the Empyrean, and walks with 
calm, majestic mastery beside its most awful gulfs. How 
abruptly it begins ! "• In the beginning was the Word, and 
the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This 
emulates, evidently, the first sentence of Genesis, and ranks 
with it, and the first word, '• God," in the Hebrews, as one 
of the three grandest introductions in literature. Our minds 
are carried back to the silent and primeval abyss. Over it 
there is heard suddenly a sound, which swells on and on, till 
to its tune that abyss conceives, labors, agonizes, and brings 
forth the universe, and the harmony dies away in the words 
— " It is very good." Or, hear a true poet — 

" A power and a glory of silence lay, 
O'erbrooding the lonely primeval day, 
Ere yet unwoven the veil of light, 
Through which shine th forth the eternal might ; 
When the Word on the infinite void went forth, 



328 JOHN. 



And stirred it with pangs of a Godlike birth ; 
And forth sprung the twain, in which doth lie, 
Enfolded all being of earth and sky. 

Then rested the Word, for its work was done." 

To follow the history of the " Omnific Word" — the Lo- 
gos, and darling thought of Plato — till he traced him entering 
into a lowly stable in Bethlehem, and wedding a village 
virgin's son, is John's difficult but divine task. Great, in- 
deed, is the mystery of godliness, but not too great to be be- 
lieved. The centre of this creation is now supposed by 
many to lie, not in one orb vaster than his fellows, but in 
some obscure point. Thus, the God of it was found in fash- 
ion as a man. in the carpenter's son — the flower of man, and 
fellow of Jehovah — but with his glory disguised behind a 
robe of flesh, and with a cross for his death-place. Who has 
not at times been impressed with an intuitive feeling, as he 
walked along with a friend, of the exact magnitude of his 
mind, and of his true character, which came rushing upon 
him, and could not be gainsayed or disbelieved ? John, too, 
as he lay on the bosom of the Saviour, and listened to his teach- 
ing, seems to have felt the burning impression, that through 
those eyes looked Omniscience, and that below that bosom 
was beating the very love of God, and said, " This is the true 
God, and Eternal Life." " The AVord was made flesh, and 
dwelt among us ; and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the 
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." No mere 
logical deduction could have led him to such a conclusion, 
apart from his profound intuitive persuasion ; and that once 
formed, no catena of ten thousand links could have dragged 
him back from it. '• Flesh and blood hath not revealed it, 
but my Father which is in heaven." 

Full to Christ, in his highest estate, from the very be- 
ginning of his Gospel, does this Evangelist point. The 
others commence with recounting his earthly ancestry, or 
the particulars of his birth. John shows him at once as the 
" Lord, high and lifted up," descending from this eminence 
to wed his own body, and to save his people's souls. 'Tis the 
only complete history of Christ. It traces his connection 
with the Father, not through the blood of patriarchs and 
kings, but through the heavens, up directly to Jehovah's 
bosom. How grand this genealogy — " No man hath seen 



JOHN. 



329 



Grod, at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the 
bosom of th<i Father, he hath declared him !" And after 
announcing his true descent, he sets himself through the 
rest of the book, as if acting under the spell of a lover's 
fascinations, to record every word which he could catch from 
those heavenly lips, as well as to narrate some of the ten- 
derer and more private incidents in the life of the " Man of 
Sorrows." 

To Samaria's well, and to the last sayings of Christ, we 
have alluded in a former chapter. But we cannot refrain 
from referring to one or two scenes, exclusively related by 
John, of an intensely poetical character : one is, the visit of 
Nicodemus to Jesus by night. Meetings of interesting and 
representative men, especially when unexpected and amid ex- 
traordinary circumstances, become critical points in the 
history of mankind. Such was the meeting of Wallace and 
Bruce : the one representing Scotland's wild patriotic valor — 
the other, its calmer, more collected, and regal-seeming 
power. Such was that of old Galileo and young Milton in 
the dungeon — surely a theme for the noblest pencil — the 
meeting of Italy's old savant^ and England's young scholar — 
the gray-haired sage, each wrinkle on his forehead the furrow 
of a star ; and the " Lady of his College," with Comus curling 
in his fair locks, and the dream of Eden sleeping on his 
smooth brow ; while the dim twilight of the cell spotted by 
the fierce eyes of the ojQ&cials, seemed the age too late, or too 
early, on which both had fallen — a meeting like that of 
Morning, with her one star, and coming day, and of Mid- 
night, with all her melancholy maturity, and hosts of dimi- 
nished suns — a meeting like that of two centuries. And so 
met, at the dark and silent hour, in the gardens of the 
Tuileries. Mirabeau and Marie Antoinette — the " wild sub- 
mitted Titan," kissing her hand as they parted, and saying, 
" Madame, the monarchy is saved," while, hark ! the echoes 
seem to catch the words, and to return them in scorn. 

It is with apology that we refer, upon the same page with 
this, to tne meeting recorded in John. Yet its interest is 
historical, as well as religious. Nicodemus represented the 
inquiring and dissatisfied mind of Jewry — " Young Jeru- 
salem" — sick of forms and quibbles, and yet unable to com- 
prehend as yet a spiritual faith ; tired of the present, but not 
ripe for the future ; in love with Christ's miracles, but fear- 
22 



330 



JOHN. 



ing his cross, and not despising its shame. And hence, 
when the evening fell down, with a step soft and silent as its 
shadows, he steals forth to meet with, and talk to, Jesus, 
Jesus, seeing in him the representative of a class — a class 
possessing many excellent qualities — who are sincere, whose 
belief in formalities and old laws and shams is shaken, who 
are anxious inquirers, but who united to these, weakness of 
will, timidity of disposition, and a lack of profound spiritu- 
ality, and self-sacrifice — tells him in effect, '• Dream not that 
you can get to heaven in this tip-toe fashion, that you can 
always walk with the night, in seeking the day ; you must go 
all my length ; you must walk with me as well as to me ; you 
must make a public and prominent stand for my cause ; and 
that you may be able to do this, you must undergo a thorough 
and vital change ; you must become a little child ; you must 
be born again ; you must sink down into the cradle ere you 
can hope to begin your ascent toward the throne." 

How this strange yet noble paradox of our religion — the 
most staggering of all spiritual truths — must have sounded 
in the ear of Nicodemus, at the dead hour of night, when all 
else was sleeping, save the stars ! Ah ! ye bright watchers, 
and holy ones, ye have many voices, many words and lan- 
guages are yours, but ye cannot utter such a truth as this — 
" Ye must be born again !" Tremble on, then, and remain 
silent, and allow him to speak who can ! 

There are modern Nicodemuses, who hold stolen inter- 
views with Christ, and cast stolen glances at Christianity, 
and yet will not walk right onwards with him, nor fully em- 
brace his faith. These are of various classes ; but we may 
here specify two. There are those, first, who, like Nicodemus, 
believe the Saviour's miracles, but do not feel the deep ra- 
dical spirituality of his religion. Such men do desperate 
battle for the external evidence, but are strangers to the 
living power. To them the words, " Ye must be born again," 
sound meaningless, empty, and strange. Others, again, a 
class numerous at present, are not in sympathy with the mi- 
raculous part of Christianity, scarcely believe in it, have, 
nevertheless, a liking for its spiritual and loftier aspects, but 
loathe the humility and childlike submission which it re- 
quires of its votaries. They would see — ^what would they 
not see? if they would stoop ; ?)ut stoop they will not. Its 
spirit, in other words, is not theirs ; and, therefore, they be- 



JOHN. 



333 



bold Christ only at and through the night. If they were 
but, like Nicodemus. to wait and hear the words of Jesus, 
till the day should break and all the shadows should flee away ! 
For he had, after all, a noble destiny. He followed Christ 
afar off ; but he followed him to the last. He was true to 
his dust. He, with Joseph of Arimathea, took him down 
from the Cross ; and both seem now chiselled supporters to 
his drooping head, and chiselled mourners over his lonely 
grave. Not men to support his living cause; they were 
marble to bend over, adorn, and defend his dead body. 

The scene between Jesus, the blind man, and the Jews, 
related in the 9th chapter, is not only remarkable, as Paley 
notices, for its air of truth, but for its dramatic interest. 
The play of character with character — the manner in which 
the peculiarities of each are supported — the retorts of the 
blind man, so keen-witted and caustic — the undulations of 
the little story — and the close in the conversion of the poor 
man, all prove it a leaf from the book of life, but plucked 
and arranged by the hand of a master and an eye-witness. 
Equally natural, and tenderer far, is the history of Lazarus 
and his sisters. We say not, with an eminent living divine, 
that Jesus loved Mary with the pure and peculiar affection 
which the word generally implies ; but certainly his heart 
regarded the circle of Bethany, of which she \sas one, with 
especial interest. Lazarus seems to have been an innocent — 
not in weakness, perhaps, but in gentleness; one of those living 
panels in the music of man whom it is pleasant and rare to 
encounter. In that house, the Saviour felt himself, more 
than anywhere else, at rest ; it was an arbor on his hill Diffi- 
culty, where he loved well to be, and where the three in- 
dwellers seemed to perform various parts in suiting and 
soothing his wide nature — Martha ministering to his necessi- 
ties, Mary sitting at his feet, and Lazarus forming his mild 
and shorn shadow. The ministering spirit, the listening dis- 
ciple, and the quiet reflector of his glory, were all there. 

Into this loving circle, the entrance of Jesus did not 
prevent that of death. And who needs to be reminded of 
the melting circumstances of that death — of the slc^W ap- 
proach of the Saviour — of the meeting with Martha — of Mary 
casting herself down in her tears before him, tears which seem 
to accuse his delay as the cause of her brother's death -of 
Christ's own troubled spirit and weeping eyes — or of the 



334 JOHN. 



brief, but victorious duel with Death, at the mouth of the 
cave, at the close of which the dead-alive came forth, and the 
yawn of the grave behind seemed that of the disappointment 
of the last enemy himself, and the light of returning life in 
Lazarus's eye, the first spark of the general resurrection ? 
" Jesus wept." It is the shortest sentence in the Bible. But 
sooner than have wanted that little sentence, should we have 
consented that all books but the Bible should have perished — 
that the entire glories of an earthly literature had sunk into 
the grave of forgetfulness. For the tears of the Divine Man 
are links binding us immediately to the throne of God, and 
the rainbow which is around it. 

John, indeed, seems to have set himself to preserve all 
the tearful passages which trickle down upon the history of 
Jesus. He was a gatherer of tears ; and to him we owe such 
rich gleanings as the scene between himself, Jesus, and Mary, 
his mother, at the Cross — the interview between Christ and 
Mary Magdalene, when the one word '• Mary," uttered in his 
old tones, opened the way to her heart, and made her feel 
that her Lord was the same to-day as he had been yester- 
day — and the cross-questioning of Simon, son of Jonas, car- 
ried on till he was grieved, and cried, " Lord, thou knowest 
all things; thou knowest that I love thee." 

Thus is the Gospel of John — the Odyssey of Christ's 
marvellous story — calmer, softer, and higher than the other 
three. The first three leave Christ with the halo of heaven 
around his head ; while this deepens, perhaps, the grandeur 
of the Ascension, by dropping the veil over it. And in what 
a noble gasconade does the warm-hearted apostle close his 
narrative ! " There are also many other things which Jesus 
did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose 
that even the world itself could not contain the books that 
should be written." A gasconade this, indeed, of a very par- 
donable sort, if it refer only to the literal deeds which our 
short-lived Saviour performed, or to the literal words of a 
three-years' ministry. But it becomes literally true, if we 
look to the spiritual import and manifold influences of that 
life Ind that gospel. These have overflowed earth, and 
spilled their golden drops throughout the universe. That 
" story of a life " has passed already into almost every lan- 
guage, and into innumerable millions of hearts. Already 
men, amid trackless wildernesses, in every region of the world, 



JOHN. 



335 

are blessing their bread and their water in the name of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, or looking up in silent worship, as they 
see the Cross of the south, at midnight, bending in the glim- 
mering desert of the tropical air. Nay, as astronomers tell 
us, that there is an era at hand when that splendid Constella- 
tion shall be seen in our hemisphere, as well as in the south, 
and shall peacefully shine down the glories of Arcturus and 
Orion ; so there is a day coming when all nations shall call 
Christ blessed, and the whole earth be filled with his glory. 
It can be done, for it is in God's power ; it shall be done, for 
it is in his prophecy. 

That this tender-hearted and babe-like apostle should 
have become the seer of the dreadful splendors of the Apoca- 
lypse — that its crown of fire should be seen sitting on the 
head of the author of the Epistle to the Elect Lady, may 
seem strange, and has, along with other difficulties, induced 
many to deny to John the authorship of this mystic volume. 
For a resolution of the external difficulties, we refer our 
readers to the critical works which abound. The intellec- 
tual difficulty does not seem to us very formidable. The 
Apocalypse difi"ers not more widely from the epistles, than 
Coleridge's " Rime of the Ancient Mariner," from his " Fears 
in Solitude ;" or, than Shelley's " Prometheus Unbound," 
from his " Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples." Often 
authors seem to rise or to sink into spheres quite alien, and 
afar from the common dwelling-placs of their genius. Their 
style and language alter. They are caught above themselves, 
like " the swift Ezekiel, by his lock of hair ;" or they slip 
momentarily down into abysses of strange bathos. So with 
John. In a desert island, with his mind thrown out, by this 
very solitude, into the obscure prospects of the future — with 
the " visions of God " bowing their burden upon his soul — 
what wonder that his language should change, his figures 
mix, and his spirit even and genius undergo transfiguration ? 
Nay, we fancy a peculiar beauty in this selection of John. 
Who has not seen a child astray in a populous city, shielded 
by her very weakness, safe, as if seated by her mother's 
knee ? Beautiful and melting, to grandeur, this spectacle ; 
but finer still that of John, lost and safe in his simplicity 
and innocence, amid the bursting vials, slow-opening seals, 
eareerino; chariots, conflictino; multitudes, and cataracts of 



fire and bloody which fill this transcendent vision 



The 



336 ' JOHN. 



helplessness of the seer adds to the greatness of the specta. 
cle ; and we feel this is no elaborate work of a visionary 
artist — it is the mere transcript of a sight which came upon 
his soul ; and no lamb ever looked with more innocent, fear- 
less unconsciousness, upon an eclipse passing over his glen, 
than does John regard the strange terrors and tumultuating 
glories of the Apocalypse. Once, indeed, he " falls down as 
dead ;" but his general attitude is that of quiet, though rapt 
reception. 

It is, indeed, a tumultuating glory that of the Revela- 
tion. He who has watched a thunderstorm half-formed, or a 
yright but cloudy sunset, must have observed, with the 
author of the " Lights and Shadows," " a show of storm, yet 
feeling of calm, over all that tumultuous yet settled world of 
cloud." It seemed a tempest of darkness or of light arrested 
in mid career. An image of the Apocalypse ! It is a hubbub 
of magnificence melting into beauty, and of beauty soaring 
into sublimity — of terror, change, victory, defeat, shame, and 
glory, agonies, and ecstasies, chasing each other over a space 
beneath which hell yawns, above which heaven opens, and 
around which earth now lightens with the glory of the one, 
and now darkens with the uprising smoke of the other. 
Noises, too, there are; the sound of chariots running to 
battle ; the opening of doors in heaven, as if answering the 
revolving portals of the pit; rejoicings heard in heaven, 
waitings arising from hell ; now the speech of dragons, now 
the voice of lambs, and anon the roar of lions ; great multi- 
tudes speaking, earthquakes crashing, trumpets sounding, 
thunders lifting up their voices — above all this, heard at in- 
tervals, the New Song from the lips ef the redeemed, amid 
it, coming up, the thin and thrilling cry of the " souls under 
the altar ;" and behind it, and closing the vision, the united 
hallelujah of earth and heaven. 

The book might thus almost be termed a spiritual orato- 
rio, ready for the transcription of a Handel or a Haydn, and 
surely supplying a subject equal to " Samson," the " Crea- 
tion," or the " Messiah." But where now the genius able to 
play it off, in all its variety and compass ? And where the 
audience who would bear its linked, and swelling, and inter- 
changing, and long-protracted harmonies ? Music has echoed 
divinely the divine wor Js — " Let there be light" — and roUr'-i 
out in thunder surges the darkness of the crucifixion, ai * 



JOHN. ^^^ 



made the blindness of the Hebrew Hercules " darkness 
audible;'''' but it has yet a greater task to do, in incarnating 
in sound the dumb and dreadful soul of music sleeping in 
the Apocalypse. 

But the question may here arise — to what order of poems 
does the Apocalypse belong — if, indeed, it be a poem at all ? 
We have read much controversy as to its poetical character 
and form. On the one hand, it has been contended, that its 
structure, and the frequent occurrence of parallelisms, con- 
stitute it entirely a poem ; while it is maintained, on the 
other, that, while poetical passages occur, its general cast is 
symbolical rather than poetical, and itself no more a poem 
than the Gospels. "We are mistaken if the theory propound- 
ed in the third chapter do not embrace and reconcile both 
those opposite views. There, we maintained that Scripture 
was composed, partly of poetic statement and partly of poetic 
song — the former including in it, too, the expression of 
symbols, which, however plainly stated, are poetical in the 
truths they shadow, as well as in the shadows themselves. 
This definition, we think, includes the whole Apocalypse. 
We have, first, in it the general dogmatic or hortatory mat- 
ter of the three commencing chapters, which, though full of 
figure, has no rhythmical rise or melody : secondly, the sym- 
bols of the temple and its furniture, the seals, beasts, &c. ; 
thirdly, the songs and ascriptions of thanksgiving sprinkled 
throughout ; and, fourthly, the great story, or plot, which 
winds its way amidst all those strange and varied elements. 
Thus, all is poetical in essence, but part only poetical in 
form. The whole is a poem, i. e., a creation ; but a creation 
like God's, containing portions of more and of less intensity 
and sweetness. The difference between it and the Gospels 
is chiefly, that they are professedly histories, with fictitious 
and rhythmical parts ; the Apocalypse professedly a vision, 
with much in it that must be taken literally, and with a pro- 
found meaning running through all its symbols and songs. 
Though a poem, it is not the less essentially^ though it is the 
less literally^ true. 

But to what species of poem does it belong? By Eich- 
horn and others, it is, on account of its changing actors, 
shifting scenes, and the presence of a chorus, ranked with the 
drama. Stuart calls it an epopee ; otliers class it with lyric 
poems We are not disposed to coincide entirely with any 



338 JOHN. 



of those opinions. As well call a series of dissolving views, 
with the music to which they dissolve or enter, a regular 
drama, with a regular chorus, as the Apocalypse. A poetic 
recital of a poetic story it is ; but both the story and the 
recital are far from regular. Lyrics ring in it, like bells 
amid a midnight conflagration ; but, as a whole, it is nar- 
rative. Shall we then say of it merely — " I saw a great 
tumult, and know not what it was ? " Or shall we call it a 
poem-mystery, acknowledging no rules, including all style 
and all forms, and gathering all diversified elements into one 
glorious, terrible, nondescript composite ? Has it not unwit- 
tingly painted its own image in one of those locusts, which it 
describes, riding over the earth? It is, in its warlike genius, 
like " unto a horse prepared for the battle." It wears on its 
head a crown of gold — the gold of towering imagery. Its 
piercing intuition mak/" ^ts '- face as the face of man, and its 
teeth as the teeth of a lion." Mystery, like the " hair of 
women," floats around it, and hardens into a "breastplate of 
iron " over its breast. Its " tail stings like a scorpion," in 
the words — " If any man shall take away from the words of 
the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out 
of the book of life, and out of the holy city." And its rapid 
and rushing eloquence is "like the sound of chariots — of 
many horses running to battle." Here^ there may be fancy 
in our use of the symbols, but the characteristics thus sym- 
bolized are realities. 

How wonderful the mere outline of this book ! The 
stage a solitary island, — 

" Placed far amid the melancholy main ;" 

the sole spectator, a gray-haired apostle of Jesus, who once lay 
on his breast, but is now alone in the world ; the time, the 
Lord's-day, acquiring a deeper sacredness from the surrounding 
solitude and silence of nature: the appearance of the Universal 
Bishop, gold-girt, with head and hairs white as snow, flaming 
eyes, feet like burning brass, voice as the sound of many 
waters, the seven stars in his right hand, and walking through 
the midst of the seven golden candlesticks ; his charges to 
his churches so simple, affectionate, and awful ; the opening 
of a door in heaven ; the throne, rainbow-surrounded, fringed 
by the seven lamps, and seeing its shadow in the sea of glass, 
mingled with fire j the Lion of the tribe of Judah opening 



JOHN. 



339 



the seals ; the coming forth of the giant steeds — one white 
as the milky banner of the Cross, another red as blood — a 
third black, and with the rider having a pair of balances in 
his hand — a fourth pale, and mounted by Death ; the cry of 
the souls under the altar ; the opening of the sixth seal ; the 
four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, and 
blowing their blasts over a silent world ; the sealing of 'the 
tribes ; the great multitude standing before the Lamb ; the 
volcano cast, like a spark, into the sea ; the opening of the 
bottomless pit ; the emergence of those fearful hybrids of 
hell — the scorpion locusts, with Apollyon as their king ; the 
unwritten words of the seven thunders ; the prophesying, 
and death, and resurrection of the two witnesses ; the woman 
clothed with the sun ; that other woman, drunk and drenched 
in holy blood ; the uprising of the twin beasts of crowned 
blasphemy ; the Lamb and his company on the Mount Zion ; 
the angel flying through the midst of heaven, with the Gospel 
in his mouth ; the man on the white cloud, • with the gold 
crown on his head, and the sharp sickle in his hand; the 
reaping of the harvest of the earth ; the vintage of blood ; 
the coming forth from the smoke of the glory of God — of the 
seven angels, with the seven last plagues, clothed with linen, 
girded with virgin gold, and holding, with hands unharmed 
and untrembling, the vials full of the wrath of God — one for 
the earth — one for the sea — one for the fountains of waters — 
one for the sun, to feed his old flame into tenfold fierceness — 
one for the seat of the beast — one for the Euphrates — and 
one for the fire-tormented and earthquake-listening air ; the 
fall of the great city Babylon ; the preparations for the 
battle of Armageddon; the advent of the Captain of the 
holy host ; the battle ; the rout of the beast, and the false 
prophet driven back upon the lake of fire ; the binding of 
Satan ; the reign of Christ and his saints ; the final assault 
of the enemy, Gog and Magog, upon the camp and the holy 
city ; their discomfiture ; the uprising, behind it, of the great 
white throne ; and the ultimate and everlasting " Bridal of 
the earth and sky " — such are the main constituents of this 
prodigious and unearthly poem, the Apocalypse, or Keve- 
lation of Jesus Christ. 

But what saz'^/a this Scripture? of what is this the ci- 
phered story ? " Who shall open this book, and loose the 
seals therof?" We seem to see ten thousand attenuated 



340 



JOHN. 



forms, and pale and eager countenances, lianging over, and 
beseeching its obstinate oracle. We remember the circle of 
books which have, in the course of ages, slowly gathered 
around it, like planets around the sun, in vain, for how can 
planets add to the clearness of their central luminary ? We 
remember the fact, that many strong spirits, such as Calvin 
and Luther, have shrunk from the task of its explication, 
and that Robert Hall is reported to have said, when asked to 
undertake it, " Do you wish me in my grave ?" We remem- 
ber that the explanations hitherto given constitute a very 
chaos of contradictions, and remind us of the 

" Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise 
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. 
For hot, cold, ftioist, and dry, four champions fierce, 
Strive here for mast'ry, and to battle bring 
Their embryon atoms ; they around the flag 
Of each his faction in their several clans, 
Light arm^d, or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow, 
Swarm populous." 

So that the question still recurs, " Who shall open the 
book, and loose the seals thereof ?" 

Sin, the sorceress, kept the key of hell. Perhaps to Time, 
the truth-teller, has been intrusted the key of this chaos ; or, 
perhaps, some angel-genius, mightier still than Mede, or El- 
liott, or Croly, may yet be seen speeding, " with a key in his 
hand," to open this surpassing problem, and witli " a great 
chain," to bind its conflicting interpreters. Our notion 
rather is, that the full solution is reserved for the second 
coming of Christ ; that he alone possesses the key to its 
mystery, who holds, also, the keys of Hades and of death ; 
and that over this hitherto inscrutable volume, as over so 
many others, the song shall be sung, " Thou, the Lion of the 
tribe of Judah, art worthy to take the book, and to open the 
seals thereof" 

We cannot close the Apocalypse, without wondering at 
its singular history. An island dream, despised at first by 
many, as we would have despised that of a seer of Mull or 
Benbecula, admitted with difficulty into the canon, has fore- 
told and outlived dynasties — made Popes tremble and toss 
upon their midnight beds — made conquerors pale, as they 
saw, or thought they saw, their own achievements traced 
along its mysterious page, and their own bloody seas antici- 



JOHN. 



343 



patcd — fired the muse of the proudest poets, and the pencil 
of the most gifted artists — and drawn, as students and ad- 
mirers, around its cloudy centre, the doctors, and theologi- 
ans, and philosophers of half the world. And, most won- 
derful of all, it has kept its secret — it has baffled inquirers, 
and continues " shrouded and folded up," like a ghost in its 
own formless shades, ranking thus, either with the dreams of 
mere madness, and forming a silent but tremendous satire 
on a world of fools, who have consented to believe and to ex- 
amine it ; or, as we believe, with those grand enigmas of Na- 
ture, Providence, and Faith, which can only be stated, and 
can only be solved, by God himself. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, AND EFFECTS OF SCRIP- 
TURE POETRY. 

This would demand a volume, instead of a chapter, inas- 
much as the influences of Scripture poetry slide away into 
the influences of Scripture itself But our purpose is mere- 
ly, first, to expand somewhat our general statements in the 
Introduction, as to the superiority of the Bible as a book ; 
and then, secondly, to point out some of the deep eff"ects it 
has had upon the mind and the literature of the world. 

To make a comparative estimate of Scripture poetry is 
not a complicated task, since the superiority of the Bible 
poets to the mass of even men of true genius, will not be 
disputed. Like flies dispersed by an eagle's wing, there are 
brushed away before them all brilliant triflers, elegant simu- 
lators, men who '- play well upon an instrument," and who 
have found that instrument in the lyre — who have turned to 
common uses the aerolite which has fallen at their door from 
heaven, and " lightly esteemed" the little, but genuine and 
God-given, power which is their all. These, too, have a place 
and a name of their own ; but the Anacreons, the Hafizs, the 
Catulli, and the Moores, must flutter aside from the " terribil 
^•ia" of Moses and David. So, too, must depart the Sauls, 



344 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, 

and Balaams, and Simon Magi — such as Byron — wliom llie 
power lifted up as it passed, contorted into a fearful har- 
mony, and went on its way, leaving them broken and defiled 
in the dust. Such are among Israel, but not of it — its hope, 
its God, are not theirs ; and even when the language of Ca- 
naan is on their lips, it sounds dreary and strange, as a song 
of joy from a broken-hearted wanderer upon the midnight 
streets. 

But others there are, who retire from the field with more 
reluctance — nay, who are disposed to dispute the Hebrew 
pre-eminence. These consist both of early and of modern 
singers. Among early poets, may be ranked, not only Ho- 
mer and Eschylus, but the Vedas of India, the poems of Ka- 
lidasa and Firdusi, Sadi and Asmai, as well as the countless 
fragments of Scandinavian and Celtic song. Of many of 
such poems, it is enough to say, that their beauties are bedded 
amid "continents of mud" — mud, too, lashed and maddened 
into explosions of fanatical folly ; and that partly through 
this environment, and partly through the inferiority of their 
poetic power, they have not, like the poetry of the Hebrews,* 
naturalized themselves among modern civilized nations. 

While the faith, which they have set to song, has seemed 
repulsive and monstrous, the song itself is broken, turgid,, 
and unequal, compared to the great Psalms and Prophecies 
of Israel. HumbolaC indicates the superiority of Hebrew 
poetry, and the cause of it, when he says, " It is characteris- 
tic of it, that, as a reflex of monotheism, it always embraces 
the whole world in its unity, comprehending the life of the 
terrestrial globe, as well as the shining regions of space. It 
dwells less on details of phenomena, and loves to contemplate 
great masses. Nature is portrayed, not as self-subsisting or 
glorious in her own beauty, but ever in relation to a higher, 
an overruling, a spiritual power." 

"We are willing to stake the supremacy of the Hebrew 
Bards over all early singers, upon this ground alone — their 
method of contemplating nature in its relation to God. 

There are three methods of contemplating the universe. 
These are the material, the shadowy, and the mediatorial. 
The materialist looks upon it as the only reality. It is a 
vast solid fact, for ever burning and rolling around, below, 
and above him. The idealist, on the contrary, regards it as 
a shadow, a mode of mind, the infinite projection of his own 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 345 



thought. The man who stands between the two extremes, 
looks on nature as a great, but not ultimate or everlasting, 
scheme of mediation or compromise between pure and abso- 
lute spirit and the incarnate soul of man. To the material- 
ist, there is an altar, star-lighted, heaven-high, but no God. 
To the idealist, there is a God, but no altar. He who holds 
the theory of mediation, has the Great Spirit as his God, 
and the universe as the altar on which he presents the gift 
of his worship or poetic praise. 

It must be obvious at once, which of those three views of 
nature is the most poetical. It is surely that which keeps the 
two principles of spirit and matter unconfounded — preserves 
in their proper relations the soul and the body of things — 
God within, and without the garment by which, in Goethe's 
grand thought, "we see him by." While one sect deify, and 
another destroy matter, the third impregnate, without identi- 
fying it with the divine presence. 

The notions suggested by this view, are exceedingly com- 
prehensive and magnificent. Nature, to the poet's eye, be- 
comes " a great sheet let down from God out of heaven," and 
in which there is no object "common or unclean." The pur- 
pose and the Being above cast a greatness over the pettiest 
or barest objects. Every thing becomes valuable when looked 
upon as a communication from God, imperfect only from the 
nature of the material used. What otherwise might have 
been concluded discords, now appear only under-tones in the 
divine voice ; thorns and thistles spring above the primeval 
curse, while the " meanest flower that blows" gives " thoughts 
that do often lie too deep for tears." The creation is 
neither unduly exalted nor contemptuously trampled under 
foot, but maintains its dignified position as an ambassador 
from the Divine King. The glory of something far beyond 
association — that of a divine and perpetual presence — is shed 
over all things. Objects the most diverse — the cradle of 
the child, the wet hole of the scorpion, the bed of the corpse, 
and the lair of the earthquake, the nest of the lark, and the 
crag on which sits, half-asleep, the dark vulture digesting 
blood — are all clothed in a light, the same in kind, though 
varying in degree — " The light which never was on sea or 
shore." 

But while the great and the infinite are thus connected 
with the little and the finite, the subordination of the latter 
23 



346 

to the former is always maintained. The most magnificent 
objects in nature are but the mirrors to God's face — the 
scaffolding to his future purposes ; and, like mirrors, are to 
wax dim, and, like scaffolding, to be removed. The great 
sheet is to be received up again into heaven. The heavens 
and the earth are to pass away, and to be succeeded, if not by 
a purely mental economy, yet by one of a more spiritual ma- 
terialism, compared to which the former shall no more be 
remembered, neither come into mind. Those frightful and 
fantastic forms of animated life, through which Grod's glory 
seems to shine with a struggle, and but faintly, shall disap- 
pear : nay, the worlds which bore and sheltered them in their 
rugged dens and caves, shall flee from the face of the Regene- 
rator. A milder day is to dawn on the universe ; the re- 
finement of matter is to keep pace with the elevation of 
mind. Evil and sin. are to be banished to some Siberia of 
space. The word of the poet is to be fulfilled — "And 
one eternal spring encircles all !" The mediatorial pur- 
pose of creation, fully subserved, is to be abandoned, that 
we may see " eye to eye," and that God may be " all in 
all." 

Such views of matter — its present ministry, the source of 
its beauty and glory, and its future destiny — are found in 
the pages of both Testaments. Their writers have their 
eyes anointed, to see that they are standing in the midst of 
a temple — they hear in every breeze and ocean billow the 
sound of a temple service — and feel that the ritual and its 
recipient throw the shadow of their greatness upon every 
stone in the corners of the edifice, and upon every eft crawl- 
ing along its floors. Reversing the miracle, they see " trees 
as men walking," hear the speechless sing, and, in the beauti- 
ful thought of our noble and gifted '• Roman." catch on their 
ears the fragments of a " divine soliloquy," filling up the 
pauses in a universal anthem. And, while rejecting the 
Pagan fable of absorption into the Deity, and asserting the 
immortality of the individual soul, they are not blind to the 
transient character of material things. They see afar off the 
spectacle of nature retiring before God — the bright toys of 
this nursery — sun, moon, earth, and stars — put away, like 
childish things, the symbols of the infinite lost in the infinite 
itself The •' heavens shall vanish like smoke ; the heavens 
shall be dissolved; the earth shall be removed like a cot- 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 



347 



tage ; the elements shall melt with fervent heat." Nowhere 
in Pagan or mystic epic, dream, drama, or didactic poem, can 
we find a catastrophe at once so philosophical and so poetical 
as this. 

If we pass from the general idea and spirit of Hebrew 
poetry, to its parts and details, many deem that other an- 
cient nations have the advantage. Where, in Scripture, it 
may be said, a piece of mental masonry so large, solid, and 
complete, as the Iliad ! Where a fiction so varied, interest- 
ing, romantic, and gracefully told, as the Odyssey 1 Where 
such awful odes to Nemesis and the Furies, as Eschylus has 
lifted up from his blasted rock, and, in vain, named Bramas? 
Where the perfect beauty of Sophocles — the Ilafi"aelle of 
Dramatists ? Where the inflamed commonplace of Demos- 
thenes, like the simple fire of a household hearth, scattered 
against the foes of Athens with the hand of a giant, or the 
bold yet beautiful mysticism of Plato, or the divine denial 
and inspired blasphemy of Lucretius ? Have the Hebrews 
aught, amidst their rugged monotonies, that can be compared 
with all this ? 

Now, in speaking to this question, we have something to 
concede and to premise, as we have, in part, premised and 
conceded before. We grant that there are in Scripture no 
such elaborate and finished works of art, as some of the 
master-pieces we have named. We grant, too, that, in 
judging of the poetic merit of the Bible, we may be 
prejudiced in its favor by early associations, by love and 
faith, just as its detractors, too, may have their internal 
motives for dislike to it. But we are not without reasons 
for the preference we give. And these are the follow- 
ing:— . 

First, Scripture poetry is of an earlier date than Grecian. 
The Muse of G-reece was but a babe at the time that she of 
Palestine was a woman, with the wings of a great eagle, 
abiding in the wilderness. This accounts, at once, for her 
inferiority in art, and her advantage in natural beauty and 
power. 

Secondly, The Poetry of the Hebrews appeared among a 
rude people, as well as in an early age — a people with few 
other arts, possessing an imperfect statuary, no painting, and 
no philosophy, strictly so called. Their poetry stood almost 
alone, and was neither aided nor enfeebled by the influences 



348 

of a somewhat advanced civilization. Hence, in criticising 
it, we feel we have to do with a severe and simple energy, as 
unique and indivisible as the torrent which broke forth from 
the rock in the desert. Like it, too, it seems a voice of na- 
ture called into play by the command of G-od. Whenever a 
nation possesses only one peculiar gift, it will be generally 
found that that gift is in perfection. And not more certainly 
were the Greeks once the undisputed masters of the science 
of beauty, the Romans of the art of war, and the Italians of 
painting, than were the Hebrews of the sublime of poetry. 

Thirdly, The purity was not inferior to the elevation of 
their stYains. And this, which proves that they came from 
a higher fountain than that of mere genius, proves also that 
they are " above all Greek, all Roman fame." Their beauties 
are "holy beauties, like dew-drops from the womb of the 
morning." There is the utmost boldness, without the least 
license, in their poetry. With blushes, we omit to press the 
contrast betwixt this and the foul offences, against reverence 
and decency, found in the cleanest of Pagan poets. Small 
need for a Christian to spit in the temples of the gods, when 
their own poets scruple not, habitually and deliberately, to 
defile them. 

Fourthly, Partly from their intense purity, partly from 
the uniform loftiness of their object, and partly, as we deem, 
from their peculiar afflatus, the bards of the Bible carry the 
credentials of a poiver unrivalled and alone. Homer and 
Virgil are the demi-gods of scholars and school-boys; So- 
phocles and Lucretius, the darlings of those who worship a 
higher art ; and Plato, the favorite prose poet of the devo- 
tees of ethnic philosophy. But the children, in all civilized 
nations, weep at the tale of Joseph, or tremble at the picture 
of Moses on the Mount ; every female heart has inscribed on 
it the story of Ruth and the figure of Mary ; the dreams, 
even of skeptics, are haunted by the glories of the Christian 
heaven or the terrors of the Christian hell ; and on the lips 
of the dying, float, faintly or fully, snatches from the Psalms 
of David, or the sayings of Jesus. The name "Jesus," 
owns one, who, we hope, shall yet feel more than he does his 
full claims, " is not so much written, as it is ploughed into 
the mind of humanity." Even supposing their divine pre- 
tensions untrue, yet here is literary poiuer — " this is true 
fame " — the only fame deserving that firmamental name, and 




Il;?^.y:'''5!!:[|liii!!!!'; 






AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 



351 



which not chance, nor antiquity, nor prejudice, nor the influ- 
ence of criticism, but merit, must have won. Not chance, 
for as soon could atoms have danced without music into a 
world, as could such and so many winged words have fortu- 
itously assembled — not antiquity, for this only increases the 
marvel — not prejudice, for have not the prejudices of the 
world been at least as strong as those of the church, and has 
not the world regarded the songs of Zion much as the Eng- 
lish, behind Harold's intrenchments, the minstrelsy of the 
Norman trouveurs. and yet owned their music and felt their 
power? — not the influence of criticism, for who ever sought to 
write up the literature of the Bible, or even gave it its just 
meed of praise, till long after it had wreathed itself round 
the imagination and the heart of mankind % But how better, 
or how at all, solve the problem of such power, save by draw- 
ing the old conclusion, '• This cometh from the Lord, who is. 
wonderful in counsel and excellent in working % " No book 
like this. It has stunned into wonder those whom it has not 
subdued into worship ; electrified those whom it has not 
warmed; established its reign in an enemy's country; and, 
while principally seeking the restoration of man's moral na- 
ture, it has captivated eternally his imagination, and cast a 
shadow of eclipse upon the brightest glories of his fiction 
and his poetry. 

For, after the concession made in regard to artistic pur- 
pose and polish, we are willing to accept the critical challenge 
given us, as to the poetic beauty of the Scriptures. We dare 
prefer Job to Eschylus and to Homer, and even Hazlitt and 
Shelley have done so before us. There is no ode in Pindar 
equal to the " Song of the Bow." and no chorus in Sophocles 
to the " Ode" of Habakkuk. In all the '•' Odyssey" there is 
nothing so pathetic and primitive as " Buth," and the story 
of Joseph. Achilles arming for battle is tame to the coming 
forth, in the x\pocalypse, of Him, whose -name is Faithful and 
True : " who is •• clothed in a vesture dipped in blood : " and 
'•treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Al- 
mighty G-od." Jeremiah and Nahum make the martial fire 
of the •■ Iliad" pale. The descriptions of natural objects in 
Lucretius seem small when compared with the massive pic- 
tures of David and Job. If he has been said " divinely to 
deny the divine," the bards of Israel have far more divinely 
confessed and reflected it, till you cry — " It is the voice of a 



God, not of a man." The questions of Demosthenes, what 
are they to those of Ezekiel or Amos, sublime and fearful as 
the round sickle of the waning moon ? Plato and the ele- 
ments of his philosophy lie quietly inclosed in some of Solo- 
mon's sentences ; and transcendently above all, whether 
Roman, Greek, or Hebrew, tower two, mingling their not«s 
with the songs of angels — the Divine Man, who spake the 
Sermon on the Mount, and the Prophet who stood in spirit 
beside his cross, and sang of him whose face was more mar- 
red than that of man, and his form than that of the sons of 



men. 



The great modern poets still remain. And here we find 
but four who can even be named in the comparison — Dante, 
Shakspeare, Milton, and Goethe. First, Dante comes for- 
ward reluctantly, for not Virgil nor Beatrice are dearer to 
him than Moses and Isaiah. Indeed, the Hebrew bards, and 
not the Mantuan poet, are his real " masters." " He is in- 
debted," says Hazlitt, " to the Bible for the gloomy tone of 
his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts and 
kindles his poetry." He owes, we should rather say, his 
gloomy tone of mind to himself, and the truths and visions, 
which frequently cheer it, to the Bible. But the second part 
of the sentence is true. The moral severity of tone, the 
purged perdition poured out upon his enemies, the air of 
exultation with which he recounts their sufi'erings, remind us 
of Ezekiel, or of him who said — '' Thou art righteous, 
Lord ! who hast judged thus, and hast given them blood to 
drink, for they are worthy." In his union, too, of a severe and 
simple style, with high idealism of conception, he resembles 
the Scripture writers, whose visions are so sublime, that they 
need only to be transcribed to produce their full effect. His 
childlike tone is also Scriptural — a tone, we may remark, 
preserved fully in no translation, save one in prose we read 
lately,* which reminded us of the " Pilgrim's Progress." 
But, while the prophets are the masters, Dante is obviously 
but a scholar. His vehemence and fury compared to theirs 
resemble furnace, beside starry, flames. Too much of per- 
sonal feeling mingles with his prophetic ire. And while pos- 
sessing more of the sublety which distinguishes the Italian 
mind, he has not such wealth of imagery, and towering gran- 

* By Dr. John Carlyle. 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 



353 



deur of eloquence, as the Hebrews, little or nothing of their 
lyrical impulse, and while at home in hell, he does not tread 
the Empyrean with such free and sovereign steps, although 
there, too, he has a right, and knows he has a right, to be. 

Shakspeare — nature's favorite, though unbaptized and 
unconsecrated, child — has derived less from Scripture than 
any other great modern author, and affords fewer points of 
comparison with it. He was rather apiece of nature than a 
prophet. His real religion, as expressed in the words, " We 
are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is 
rounded with a sleep," seems to have been a species of ideal 
Pan'^heism. He loved the fair face of nature ; he saw also 
its poetic meaning ; but did not feel, nor has expressed so 
deeply its under-current of moral law, nor the sublime atti- 
tude it exhibits, as leaning upon its God. Hence, while the 
most wide and genial, and one of the least profane, he is also 
one of the least religious of poets. His allusions to Scrip- 
ture, and to the Christian faith, are few and undecided. He 
has never even impersonated a character of high religious 
enthusiasm. He never, we think, could have written a good 
sacred drama ; and had he tried to depict a Luther, a Knox, 
a Savonarola, or any character in whose mind one great, ear- 
nest idea was predominant, he had failed. The gray, clear, 
catholic sky behind and above, would have made such vol- 
canoes pale. Had he written on Knox, Queen Mary would 
have carried away all his sympathies ; or, on Luther, he would 
have been more anxious to make Tetzel ridiculous, than the 
Reformer reverend or great. Shakspeare was not, in short, 
an earnest man, hardly even — strange as the assertion may 
seem — an enthusiast, and. therefore, stood in exact contrast 
to the Hebrew bards. He often trifled with his universal 
powers — they devoted the whole of their one immense talent 
to God. He, like his own Puck or Ariel, loved to live in 
the colors of the rainbow, to play in the plighted clouds, to 
do his spiriting gently, when he did it, but better still to 
swing in the " blossom that hangs from the bough ;" they 
were ready-girt, stripped, and sandalled, as those " minister- 
ing spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation." 
He seemed sometimes waiting upon the wing for a great 
commission, which never came — the burden of the Lord lay 
always upon their spirits. He was of the " earth earthy," 
the truest and most "V ariegated emanation from its soil ; but 



354 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, 

they light upon the mountains like sunbeams from a higher 
region. Even of the " myriad-minded" Shakspeare may we 
not say, that " he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is 
greater than he ;" and that " a little child" like John 
" might lead" this giant of the drama, and miracle of men. 

Milton, on the other hand, seems almost a belated bard 
of the Bible. And this is not simply on account of his ge- 
nius, or of the deep tinge of Hebraism which his studies gave 
to all his writings, but because he has sought his inspiration 
from the same sources. He has gone to the depths of his 
moral, as well as mental nature, in search of the fountains of 
poesy. He has cried aloud to the Eternal Spirit to send 
his seraphim to touch his lips with a live coal from his altar. 
Hence his writings have attained a certain sifted purity we 
can find nowhere else out of Scripture. Hence a settled 
unity and magnificence of purpose, which no defects in the 
mere mechanism of composition, nor sinkings in energy, can 
disturb. Hence the quotations from the Bible fall sweetly 
into their places along his page, and find at once suitable so- 
ciety. Warton, in an ingenious paper in the " Adventurer," 
ascribes Milton's superiority over the ancients to the use he 
has made of Scripture ; he might rather have traced it to the 
sympathy with the Hebrew genius, which has made his use 
of it so wise, and so effectual ; for mere crude quotation, or 
dexterous imitation, would never have elevated him to such 
a height. Unless, in conscious majesty, he had " come unto 
his own," his own would not have received him. Had not 
his nature been supernal, his thefts had not been counted the 
thefts of a god. 

But even in Milton's highest flights we miss much, besides 
the untransferable prophetic differentia of the Bible poets. 
He has not the perfect ease of motion which distinguishes 
them. He is a " permitted guest ;" they are " native and 
endued " to the celestial element. He is intensely conscious 
of himself — never forgets who it is that sits on the fiery 
chariot, and passes through the gates into the presence of the 
" thousand ardors ;" they are lost, though not blasted, in the 
ocean of light and glory. He may be likened to one of those 
structures of art, the pyramids, or the minsters which nature 
seems to "adopt into her race" — the Hebrews to the cathe- 
drals of the woods, made oracular at evening by the wind of 
Heaven. 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 



355 



Goethe, we know, admired the Bible as a composition, 
took great interest in its geography, and had his study hung 
round with maps of the Holy Land. But even less than 
Shakspeare did he resemble its poets. Universal genius bred 
in Shakspeare a love for all things which he knew, without 
much enthusiasm for any in particular. An inferior, but 
more highly cultured degree of the same power, led Goethe 
to universal liking, which at a distance seemed, and in some 
degree was, indifference. His great purpose, after the fever 
of youth was spent, was to build up his Ego, like a cold, 
majestic statue, and to surround it with offerings from every 
region — from earth, heaven, and hell ! He transmuted all 
things into ink ; he analyzed his tears ere suffering them to 
fall to the ground : his tortures he tortured in search of their 
inmost meaning ; his vices he rolled like a sweet morsel, that 
he might know their ultimate flavor, and what legacy of les- 
son they had to leave him ; his mental battles he fought o'er 
again, that he might become a mightier master of spiritual 
tactics ; like the ocean, whatever came within his reach, was 
ingulfed, was drenched in the main element of his being, 
went to swell his treasures, and generally " suffered a sea- 
change," into "something" at once "rich," "strange," and 
cold. This was not the manner of the rapt, God-filled, 
self-emptied, sin-denouncing, impetuous, and intense bards of 
Israel. Could we venture to conceive Isaiah, or Ezekiel, 
entering Goethe's chamber at Weimar, and uttering one of 
their divine rhapsodies — how mildly would he have smiled 
upon the fire-eyed stranger — how attentively heard him — 
how calmly sought to measure and classify him — how punc- 
tually recorded in his journal the appearance of an " extraor- 
dinary human meteor, a wonderful specimen of uncultured 
genius" — and how complacently inferred his own superiority ! 
But no : the chill brow of Chimborazo is indeed higher far 
than the thunderstorm leading its power and terrible beauty 
along his sides, and is nearer the sun : but the sun there is 
rayless and cold, the air around is eternal frost, the calm and 
silence are those of death ; whereas a hundred valleys below 
hear in the thunder the voice, and see in the lightning the 
footsteps, of God: the one is eloquent, although it be with 
warning ; and the other warm, although it be with wrath. 

In that glorification of Goethe, so common in the present 
day, we see an attempt to exalt art above nature, culture 



356 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, 

above genius, study above impulse, tlie artist above the poet 
— an attempt with which we have no sympathy. No doubt, 
a certain measure of culture is now, as it always was, neces- 
sary to men of genius ; but surely this is not an age in which 
culture is so neglected, that we need inculcate it at the ex- 
pense of original power. Nay, it is now so generally and 
equally diffused, and its effects are so frequentty confounded 
with the miracles of genius, that it becomes incumbent on 
the critic, with peculiar sternness, to point to the impassible 
gulf of distinction, and to assert that there is still a certain 
inspiration 

*' Which comes and goes like a dream. 
And which none can ever trace;" 

" a wind which bloweth where it listeth" — a mysterious some- 
thing which no culture can give, and no lack of it can alto- 
gether take away. It is the tendency of the age — a low and 
infidel tendency — to trace every phenomenon, both of mind 
and matter, downwards, through developments and external 
influences, instead of upwards, through internal and incalcu- 
lable powers. Genius, with our modern philosophers, is only 
a curious secretion of the brain ; poetry must be " scientific," 
else it is nought. Shakspeare, indeed, was an •' extraordi- 
nary development ;" but our poetical bees must not now be 
permitted to follow their own divine instinct in building the 
lofty rhyme — they must to school, and be taught geometry. 
And let none dare to suck at the breasts of the Mighty 
Mother, till he has been elaborately trained how to do it ! 
The first principle of this criticism is, to avoid faults, and 
the second, to shun beauties. Beware of too many fine 
things. Remember the couplet — 

" Men doubt, because so thick they lie, 
If they be stars, that paint the galaxy." 

Now the secret of this sophistry seems to lie in the confusion 
between the truly and the falsely fine. Can too many really 
new and beautiful things be said on any subject ? Can there 
be too many stars in an unbounded universe ? If artistic 
perfection is to be sought at the price even of one consum- 
mate pearl- — perhaps the seed-pearl of a great truth — were it 
not better lost ? Even were it only a beautiful image, should 
it be permitted to perish ? for does not fevery beautiful image 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 3^7 

represent, at least, the bright edge or corner of a truth ? 
No fear that books, all-beautiful and full of meaning, sh?Jl be 
unduly multiplied. As well be alarmed for the advent of 
perfect men. Of too much truth or beauty let us complain, 
when we have had a spring day too delightful, a sunbeam too 
delicately spun, an autumn too abundant. The finest writers 
in the world have been the most luxuriant. Witness Jeremy 
Taylor, Shakspeare, Milton, Burke, and the Hebrew bards. 
It is an age of barren or cold thinkers which finds out that 
the past has been too rich and tropical — wishes that Job had 
shorn his Behemoths and Leviathans, and Isaiah let blood 
ere he uttered his cries against Egypt and Assyria ; and not 
only admires a book more, because its faults are few, than 
because its beauties are many, but regards the thick glories 
which genius may have dropped upon it, as blemishes — its 
" many crowns," as proud and putrid ulcers. And, with re- 
gard to the vaunted couplet quoted above, we may remember 
that the nebular hypothesis is exploded. They are stars, 
nay suns, which paint our and every other galaxy ! 

The eff"ects of all this, against which we protest, have been 
to crown Goethe " a mockery-king of snow" over our modern 
peetry — to create a style of misty and pretentious criticism, 
for ever appealing to certain assumed principles, but desti- 
tute of genuine instinctive insight into poetry, and of its 
clear, manly, and fervid expression — to rear a set of poets 
who elaborately imitate the German giants, especially in their 
faults, and deliberately " darken counsel by words without 
knowledge" — to substitute for the living and blood-warm 
raptures of poesy, rhapsodies, at once mad and measured, 
extravagant and cold, obscure and shallow — and to dethrone 
for a time the great ancient Kings of the Lyre, who " spake 
as they were moved," and whose impetuous outpourings ar- 
ranged themselves into beauty, created their own principles 
of art, and secured their own immortality, as they fell, clear 
and hot, from the touched spirit and glowing heart. We 
need scarcely add, that while much of the popular poetry of 
the day is cold with unbelief, or dark with morbid doubt, that 
which it seeks to supersede was the flower of a rooted reli- 
gious faith. 

We come now to speak of the influences of Scripture 
poetry. And these include its religious and intellectual in- 
fluences. How much religion owes to poetry ! There is 



358 COMrARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, 

not a form of it so false, but has availed itself of the aid of 
song; Thor and Woden loom and lean over us, from the 
north, through the mist of poetry, like the Great Bear and 
Arcturus shining dimly down through the shifting veil of the 
Aurora. Seeva, Bramah, and Vishnu, have all had their 
laureates, and the wheels of Juggernaut have moved to the 
voice of hymns and music. Mahomet is the hero of ten 
thousand parables, poems, and tales in the East. The Fire- 
god of Persia has been sung in many a burning strain. The 
wooden or stone idols of Africa have not wanted their sing- 
ers. Pantheism itself has inspired powerful and eloquent 
strains. Lucretius has extracted a wild and magnificent 
music from Atheism — a music played off on the dry bones 
of a dead universe. Every belief or non-belief has found its 
poetry, excepting always modern materialism, as represented 
by the utilitarian philosophy. There is no speculation in 
its eye — no man of genius can make it beautiful, because it 
has not one beautiful element in it, and because no man of 
genius can believe it ; its sole music is the chink of money ; 
its main theological principle (the gradual development of 
mud into man, and dirt into deity) is as incapable of poetic 
treatment as it is of scientific proof ; and what, unless to 
place it as a prime article in the museum of human folly, 
can be done to a caj^ut inortuuin so hateful and so helpless ? 
If poetry has thus fanned the flames of false religions, 
much more might have been expected to advance the inte- 
rests and glorify the doctrines of the true. And hence, from 
the beginning, poetry has been a " Slave of the Lamp" to the 
monotheistic faith. The first thunder-word (Be light) that 
startled the silence of the primeval deep, was a word of poet- 
ry. The first promise made to fallen man (that of the wo- 
man's seed) was uttered in poetry. In the language of figure 
and symbol, Grod spake to the patriarchs. Moses, the legis- 
lator of Israel, was a poet ; the scene at Sinai was full of 
transcendent poetical effect — the law was given amid the sa- 
vage minstrelsies of tempest and of thunder. In later ages, the 
flame of Jewish piety v/as now stirred by the breath of pro- 
phetic song, and now sunk into ashes, when that died away. 
The Grospcl was born to the sound of angelic harmonies ; its 
first utterance was in heavenly poetry and praise. And to 
poetry and song, the present system is to pass away ; the 
grave to' open to its golden strains j the books of judgment, 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 36 1 

at its bidding, are to expand their oraculur pages ; and when 
the fairer creation descends, again are the morning stars to 
sing together, and all the sons of God to shout for joy. 

It is not easy, too, to say how much, even now, the poetic 
form of Scripture contributes to its preservation, and to its 
spread through the world. Its poetry charms many of its 
professed enemies ; and, as tliey listen to its old and solemn 
harmonies, their right hand forgets its cunning, and, instead* 
of casting stones at it, they become stone themselves. The 
officers who were sent to apprehend Christ went away, ex- 
claiming — " Never man spake like this man." So many, who 
have drawn near the Bible, as executors, not of another's, 
but of their own hatred, have said, as they turned at last 
from it, lest they should be entirely subdued — - Never book 
spake like this book." Its poetical beauty has had another 
influence still, in regard to those of its foes who have ven- 
tured to assail it. It has served to expose and shame, and 
to rouse general feeling against them. Never does a ruffian 
look more detestable, than when insulting the beautiful ; 
never is a hoof more hateful, than when trampling on a rose. 
When a Lauder snatches rudely at the laurels of a Milton, 
intellectual Britain starts up to resent the outrage. When 
even the foul spittle of a sick and angry giant falls awry, 
and threatens to sully the fair fame of a Howard, we have 
seen lately how dangerous it is for the greatest to tamper 
with the verdicts of the universal human heart. And so the 
few, such as Paine, who have insulted the Hebrew or Greek 
Scriptures, have been blasted with unanimous reprobation. 
It has fared with them, as with Uzziah, when he went in to 
profane the temple of the Lord. That instant, the fatal spot 
of leprosy rose to his brow, and, while all around sought to 
thrust him out, he himself hasted to depart. In fact, the 
love that beats in the general bosom to this book is never 
disclosed till at such times, when thousands, who care little 
for its precepts, and are skeptical of its supreme authority, 
rise up, nevertheless, in indignation, and say — " The man 
who abuses the Bible, insults the race : in trampling on a 
book so beautiful, and that has been so widely believed, he is 
trampling on all of us. and on himself Let him, as a moral 
leper, be dragged without the gate, and perish in his own 
Bbame." So wisely has God guarded his Book, by the awful 
24 



362 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INPLTJENCES, 

beauty which, like a hedge of roses mingled with thorns, sur- 
rounds it all. 

The same environment of poetry has not only prevailed 
to defend, but to circulate, the Bible. It has opened to it 
the hearts of children, who, although unable to comprehend 
even partially its doctrines, and feeling much in its precepts 
that is repulsive to their early and evil instincts, yet leap 
tnstantly to its loveliness, its interest, pathos, and simple 
majesty. Many have sought to panegyrize the Scriptures ; 
but, of all such attempts, only the panting praises of the dy- 
ing, such as the words of Crabbe, when he said — " That 
blessed book — that blessed book !" — can be compared with 
the encomiums which the lips and the looks, the day and the 
night dreams, of the young have passed upon it. Perdition 
is often wrapped up in jelly for infant palates ; but " here is 
wisdom" the divinest, employed in hiding the medicine of 
eternal life, amid the sweet preparations of the Psalms, the 
stories, and the imagery of the Book of God. 

This beauty is as humble as it is high. It enters-into 
the lowliest cottages, secure, like our illustrious sovereign, in 
her own native dignity and lofty innocence. No altar for 
this divine Book superior to the dusty table of the poor, 
where, amid foul fire and smoke, and fouler hearts, it lies 
day and night, gradually clearing the atmosphere, and chang- 
ing the natures around it — where, at first regarded with awe, 
as a powerful foe, it is next admired as an intelligent com- 
panion, and at last taken to the heart, as the best friend. 
Fine, the " big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride," produced 
by the gray-haired sage of the simple pious family ; but finer 
still, the Book dropped into a godless house, and there left 
alone, save for the spirit-light of its own pages, to work its 
way and God's will, till, at last, it becomes the centre and 
the eye, the master and the magnet, of the dwelling. And, 
but for its beauty, would it so soon have won a triumph like 
this? 

This beauty, too, is free of the world. It passes, un- 
shorn and unmingled, into every language and every land. 
Wherever the Bible goes, "beauty," in the words of the 
poet, "pitches her tents before it." Appealing, as its poetry 
does, to the primitive principles, elements, and "jill that 
must eternal be," of the human mind — using the oldest 
speech, older than Hebrew, that of metaphors and symbols 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 



363 



— telling few, but lifelike, stories — and describing scenes 
which paint themselves easily and for ever on the heart — it 
needs little more introduction than does a gleam of sunshine 
or a flash of lightning. It soon domesticates itself among 
the Cafi"res, or the Negroes, or the Hindoos, or the Hotten- 
tots, or the Chinese, who all feel it to be intensely human, 
before they feel it to be divine. What heart but must pal- 
pitate at the sight of this Virgin Daughter of the Most 
High, going forth from land to land, with no dower but inno- 
cence, and with no garment but beauty ; yet powerful in her 
loveliness as light, and in her innocence safe as her Father 
who is in heaven ? 

Or, let us look at the influences her beauty exerts among 
the advanced and the intelligent of her votaries. These have 
perhaps been at first attracted by this to her feet. They have 
loved her beauty before they knew her worth, for often 

" You must love her, ere to you 
She doth seem worthy of your love." 

And even after they have learned to value her for her inter- 
nal qualities, the enchantment of her loveliness remains. 
The love of their espousals is never wholly lost ; and they 
say, with exultation — " Our beloved is not only a king's 
daughter, and all-glorious within, but she is fair as the moon, 
and clear as the sun." Nay, even when doubts as to this 
royal origin may at times cross their mind, they are re- 
assured by gazing again at her transcendent beauty, and 
seeing the blood of heaven blushing in her cheek. In the 
poetical beauty and grandeur of Scripture, we have, as it 
were, a perpetual miracle attesting its divine origin, after the 
influence of its first miracles has in a great measure died 
away, and although all now be still arond Sinai's mount, and 
upon Bethlehem's plains. 

Perhaps it may be thought that we are attributing too 
much to the influence of beauty. Does not the Bible owe 
much more to its divine truth ? and does it not detract from 
that truth, to say that beauty has done so much ? But, first, 
we do not maintain that its beauty has done as much as its 
truth ; secondly, the influence of beauty has been subsidiary 
and subordinate ; thirdly, had there been no background of 
truth, the influence of beauty would have been inconsider- 
able and transient ; and, fourthly, the beauty is of that purged 



364 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, 



and lofty order which betokens the presence of the highest 
truth — the wings are those of angels, the flowers those of 
the garden of God. 

We say not that the beauty of Scripture ever did, or ever 
can convert a soul ; but it may often have attracted men to 
those means of spiritual influence where conversion is to be 
found. The leaves, not the flowers, of the tree of life, are 
for the healing of the nations ; but surely the flowers have 
often first fascinated the eye of the wanderer, and led him 
near to eat and live. When Christianity arose, it " streamed," 
Bays Eusebius, " over the face of the earth like a sunbeam ;" 
and men were too much struck by its novelty, its bright and 
blessed revelations, its adaptation to their wants, to think 
much of the lovely hues, and soft charms, and lofty graces, 
by which it was surrounded. It is very diff"erent now, when 
it needs a perception of all those subsidiary attractions to 
induce multitudes of the refined and intellectual to devote 
due investigation to its claims. 

And besides such direct efi'ects of Scripture poetry in 
drawing men to inquire into Scripture truth, an-d in confirm- 
ing Christians in their attachment to it, there is a silent but 
profound indirect moral power wielded by it in the world. 
It has refined society, softened the human heart, promoted 
deference and respect to woman, and tenderness to children, 
cleansed to a great degree the temple of our literature, and 
especially of our poetry and fiction — denounced licentious- 
ness, while inculcating forgiveness and pity to those led 
astray, and riotous living, while smiling upon social inter- 
course — suspended the terrors of its final judgment over 
high as well as low, over the sins of the heart as well as of 
the conduct, over rich and respectable children of hell as 
well as over the devil's pariahs and poor slaves — and has 
branded such public enormities as war, slavery, and capital 
punishments, with the inexpiable mark of its spirit, and is 
destroying them by the breath of its power. We say Scrip- 
ture j^oecry has done all this : for how feeble and ineffectual 
had been mere enactments and precepts, compared with the 
poems in which the Gospel principles have been inscribed — 
the parables in which they have been incarnated — compared 
to such living scenes as Jesus holding up a child in the midst 
of his disciples, or saying to the woman taken in adultery, 
" Go and sin no more," or commending his mother to his be- 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTTJRE POETRY. 361; 



loved disciple from the Cross, or making -^-ater into wine at 
Cana, or feasting with publicans and sinners — or to such pic- 
tures as Dives tormented in that flame, or of Christ seated 
on the great white throne — or to such denunciations as his 
reverberated woes against the formalists and hard-hearted 
professors of his day ! If our antiquated Jerichos of evil 
be tottering, and have already to some extent tottered down, 
it is owing to the shout of poetic attack with which the ge- 
nius of Christianity has been so long assailing them. 

We pass to speak of the intellectual influences of Scrip- 
ture poetry. And these, also, are of two kinds — direct and 
indirect: direct, as coming on minds from the immediate 
battery of the Bible itself; and indirect, as transmitted 
through the innumerable writers who have received and 
modified the shock. 

In order to try to form some conception of the influence 
of the Scriptures upon the minds of the millions who have 
read them, let our readers ask each at himself the question, 
'■What have I gained from their perusal?" And if he has 
read them for himself, and with an ordinary degree of intelli- 
gence, there must arise before his memory a •• great multitude 
which no man can number," of lofty conceptions of God — of 
glimpses into human nature — of thoughts - lying too deep for 
tears" — of pictures, still or stormy, passing from that age to 
the canvas of imagination to remain for ever — of emotions, 
causing the heart to vibrate with a strange joy, '• which one 
may recognize in more exalted stages of his being" — of in- 
spirations, raising for a season the reader to the level of his 
author — and of perpetual whispered impressions, '• This is 
the highest thought and language I ever encountered : I am 
standing on the pinnacle of literature." x\nd then, besides, 
he will remember how often he returned to this volume, and 
found the charm remaining, and the fire still burning, and the 
fountain of thought and feeling (thought suggestive, feeling 
creative) still flowing — how every sentence was found a text, 
and how many texts resembled deep and deepening eyes, 
'' orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death " — how each new 
perusal showed firmament above firmament, rising in the 
book as in the night sky. till at last he fell on his knees, and, 
forgetting to read, began to wonder and adore — how. after 
this trance was over, he took up the book again, and found 
that it was not only a telescope to show him things above, 



366 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, 

but also a microscope to show him things below, and a mirror 
to reflect his own heart, and a magic glass to bring the future 
near — and how, at last, he was compelled to exclaim, " How 
dreadful is this book ; it is none other than the book of God ; 
it is the gate of heaven !" Multiply this, the experience of 
one, by an unknown number of millions, and you have the 
answer to the question as to the direct intellectual influence 
of the Scriptures upon those who have really read them. 

But it is more to our purpose to trace the influence it 
has radiated upon the pages of modern authors, and which 
from thence has been reflected on the world. Let. a rapid 
glance suffice. 

Dante, we have seen, has snatched fire from the Hebrew 
sun, to light up his own deep-sunk Cyclopean hearth. Tasso's 
great poem is '• Jerusalem Delivered," and the style, as well 
as the subject, shows the influence of Scripture upon a 
feebler and more artificial spirit than Dante's. Spenser has 
been called by Southey a '' high priest ; " and his ''Faery 
Queen," in its pure moral tone, nothing lessened by its child- 
like naivete and plain spoken descriptions, as well as in its 
gorgeous allegory, betrays the diligent student of the 
'• Song," the Parables, and the Prophets. Griles and Phineas 
Fletcher — the one in his " Temptation and Victory of Christ," 
and the other in his " Purple Island '" — are more deeply in- 
debted to the Scriptures ; their subjects are more distinctly 
sacred, and their piety more fervid than Spenser's, their 
master. George Herbert was called by excellence " holy," 
and his "Temple" proclaims him a poet "after God's own 
heart:" it is cool, chaste, and still, as the Temple of Jerusa- 
lem on the evening after the buyers and sellers were ex- 
pelled. The genius, rugged and grand, of Dr. Donne, and 
that of Quarles, so quaint and whimsical, and that of Cowley, 
so subtile and cultured, were all sanctified. Of Milton, what 
need we say % His poems deserve, much more than Wisdom 
or Ecclesiasticus, to be bound up between the two Testa- 
ments. Nor let us omit a sacred poem, to which he was 
somewhat indebted, " The Weeks and Works of Du Bartas," 
a marvellous medley of childish weakness and manly strength, 
with more seed-poetry in it than any poem, except " Festus," 
— the chaos of a hundred poetic worlds. Bunyan seems to 
have read scarcely a book but the Bible. When he quotes it, 
it is by chapters at a time, and he has nearly quoted it all 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 367 

He seems to think and dream, as well as speak and write in 
Scripture language. Scripture imagery serves him for fancy 
— for, with the most vivid of imaginations, fancy he has 
none — and Scripture words for eloquence, for, though his in- 
vention be Shakspearean, his language is bare and bald. He 
alone could have counterfeited a continuation of the Bible ! 
He was not the modern Isaiah nor Jeremiah, for he had no 
lofty eloquence ; and his pathos was wild and terrible rather 
than soft or womanly — the " Man in the Cage " is his saddest 
picture; but he was the modern Ezekiel, in his vehement 
simplicity, his burning zeal, and the almost diseased objec- 
tiveness of his genius. Macaulay says, there were in that 
age but two men of original genius — the one wrote the 
" Paradise Lost," and the other the " Pilgrim's Progress ;" 
and he might have added, that both seemed incarnations of 
the spirit of Hebrew poetry, and that the tinker had more of 
it than the elaborate poet. The age of Elisha and Amos 
seemed to have rolled round, when from among the basest of 
the people sprang up suddenly this brave man, like the figure 
of his own Pilgrim, and cried out to the Recorder of immor- 
tal names, '' Set mine down," and the song was straightway 
raised over him — 

" Come in, come in, 
Eternal glory thou shalt win." 

Macaulay, however, here is wrong ; and has sacrificed, as 
not unfrequently is his manner, the truth on the sharp prong 
of an antithesis. There were in that age men of original 
genius besides Milton and Bunyan ; and almost all of them 
had baptized it at '• Siloa's brook, which flowed hard by the 
oracle of Grod." Cromwell's sword was a '• right Jerusalem 
blade." Hobbes himself had studied Scripture, and borrowed 
from it the names of his books, '' Behemoth" and " Levia- 
than." If a Goliath of G-ath, he came at least from the 
borders of the laad of promise. Jeremy Taylor soared and 
sang like Isaiah. John Scott copied the severe sententious- 
ness and unshrinking moral anatomy of James ; and had 
besides touches of sublimity, reminding you of the loftier of 
the minor prophets. Barrow reasoned as if he had sat, a 
younger disciple, at the feet of Paul's master, Gamaliel. 
John Howe rose to calm Platonic heights, less through the 
force of Plato's attraction than that of the beloved disciple. 



368 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, 



And Richard Baxter cauglit, carried into his pulpit, and 
sustained even at his solitary desk, the old fury of pure and 
passionate zeal for Grod, hatred at sin, and love to mankind, 
which shook ^he body of Jeremiah, and flamed around the 
head and beard, and shaggy raiment of the Baptist. 

In the century that succeeded — even in the '-godless 
eighteenth century" — we find numerous traces of the power 
of the Bible poetry. The allegories, and all the other serious 
papers of Addison, are tinged with its spirit. He loves not 
so much its wilder and higher strains ; he gets giddy on the 
top of Lebanon, the valley of dry bones he treads with timid 
steps, and his look cast up toward the " terrible crystal," is 
rather of fright than of admiration. Well able to appreciate 
the '• pleasures," he shrinks from those tingling '• pains" of 
imagination. Nor has he much sympathy with that all-ab- 
sorbing earnestness which surrounded the prophets. But 
the lovelier, softer, simpler, and more pensive parts of the 
Bible are very dear to the gentle '• Spectator." The '• Song" 
throws him into a dim and languishing ecstasy. The stories 
of Joseph and of Buth are the models of his exquisite sim- 
plicity ; and the 8th and 104th Psalms, of his quiet and 
timorous grandeur. We hear 'of Addison " hinting a fault, 
and hesitating dislike ;" but, more truly, he hints a beauty, 
and stammers out love. He says himself the finest thing, 
and then blushes, as if detected in a crime. Or he praises 
an obvious and colossal merit in another ; and if he has done 
it above his breath, he " starts at the sound himself has 
made." His encomiums are the evening whispers of lovers 
— low, sweet, and trembling. Thus timidly has he panegy- 
rized the beauties of the Bible ; but his graceful imitations, 
and particularly his vision of Mirza (was he ashamed of it. too. 
and therefore left it a fragment?) — so Scriptural in its spirit, 
style, and nameless, unconscious charm — show deeply they 
had engraved themselves upon his heart. 

Even Pope, the most artificial of true poets, has found 
*^ his own" in Scripture poetry. Isaiah's dark billowy forests 
have little beauty in his eye ; but he has collected the flowers 
which grow beneath, and woven them into that lovely garland, 
the '• Messiah." In his hands. Homer the sublime becomes 
Homer the brilliant, and Isaiah the majestic becomes Isaiah 
the soft and elegant. But, as Warton remarks, Pope's 
" Messiah" owes its superiority to Virgil's "Pollio," entirely 



AND EFFFCTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 369 

to the Hebrew poets. Young has "borrowed little from them, 
or from any one else ; he is the most English original poet 
of the eighteenth century ; his poetry comes from a fierce 
fissure in his own heart : still, the torch hy which he lights 
himself through the "Night" of his "Thoughts" has been 
kindled at the New Testament ; and his " Last Day," and his 
" Paraphrase on Job," are additional proofs of the ascendency 
of the Hebrew genius over his own. Thomson's Hymn is 
avowedly in imitation of the latter Psalms ; and his mind, in 
its sluggish magnificence and lavish ornaments, is distinctly 
Oriental. Every page of the " Seasons " shows an imagination 
early influenced by thv^ breadth, fervor, and maniloquence of 
prophetic song. Johnson, too, in his "Kasselas," "Rambler," 
and " Idler," is often highly Oriental, and has caught, if not 
the inmost spirit, at least the outer roll and volume of the 
style of the prophets. Burke, in his " Regicide Peace," ap- 
proaches them far more closely, and exhibits their spirit as 
well as style, their fiery earnestness, their abruptness, their 
impatience, their profusion of metaphor, their " doing well to 
be angry, even unto death," and the contortions by which 
they were delivered of their message, as of a demon. How 
he snatches up their words, like the fallen thunderbolts of 
the Titan war, to heave them at his and their foes ! No 
marvel that the cold-blooded eighteenth century thought him 
mad. Burns admired his Bible better than he ever cared to 
acknowledge ; and during his last illness, at the Brow, was 
often seen with it in his hands. Some of the finest passages 
in both his prose and verse are colored by Scripture, and 
leave on us the impression, that, had he looked at it more 
through his own naked eagle-eye, and less through the false 
media of systems, and commentaries, and critics, he had felt 
it to be the most humane, the most liberal, the least aristo- 
cratic, the most loving, as well as the sublimest and the one 
divine book in the world. As it was, that dislike to it natu- 
ral to all who disobey its moral precepts, was aggravated in 
him by the wretchedly cold critical circles among whom he 
fell, who in their hearts preferred Racine's " Athalie" to the 
Lamentations, and "Douglas" to Job. Hence he praises 
Scripture with something like misgiving, and speaks of the 
pompous language of the Hebrew bards, an epithet which he 
means partly in praise, but partly also in blame, and applies 



370 

to the expression, as simple as it is sublime, " Who walketh 
on the wings of the wind." 

Cowper, the most timid of men, was, so far as moral 
courage went, the most daring of poets. He was an oracle, 
hid not in an oak, but in an aspen. His courage, indeed, 
sometimes seems the courage of despair. Hopeless of heaven, 
he fears nothing on earth. " How can I fear," says Prome- 
theus, " who am never to die ?" How can I fear, says poor, 
unhappy Cowper, who shall never be saved ? And in no- 
thing do we see this boldness more exemplified than in his 
" Bibliolatry." Grant that Bibliolatry it was ; it was the 
extreme of an infinitely worse extreme. In an age when 
religion was derided, when to quote the Bible was counted 
eccentric folly, when Lowth was writing books to prove the 
prophets " elegant," a nervous hypochondriac ventured to 
prefer them by infinitude to all other writers, defended their 
every letter, drank into their sternest spirit, and poured out 
strains which, if not in loftiness or richness, yet in truth, en- 
ergy, earnestness, and solemn pathos, seem omitted or mislaid 
"burdens of the Lord." Blessings on this noble " Castaway," 
rising momentarily o'er the moonlit surge, which he dreamed 
ready to be his grave, and shouting at once words of praise 
to that Luminary which was never to rescue him, and words 
of warning to those approaching the same fearful waters. 

In the nineteenth century, all our great British authors 
have more or less imbibed the fire from the Hebrew foun- 
tains. There had b»en, in the mean time, a reaction in the 
favor of them, as well as of other things "old." For fifty 
years, the Bible, like its author, had been exposed on a cross 
to public ignominy; gigantic apes, like Voltaire, chattering 
at it ; men of genius turned, by some Circean spell, into 
swine, like Mirabeau, and Paine, casting filth against it ; 
demoniacs, whom it had half-rescued and half-inspired, like 
Rousseau, making mouths in its face; till, as darkness blot- 
ted out the Heaven above, and an earthquake shook Europe 
around, and all things seemed rushing into ruin, men began 
to feel, as they did on Calvary, that this was all for Christ's 
sake; and they trembled; and what their brethren there 
could not or did not — they stopt ere it was too late. The 
hierophants of the sacrilege, indeed, were dead or hopelessly 
hardened, but their followers paused in time ; and the mind 



AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 



371 



of the civilized world was shaken back into an attitude of 
respect, if not of belief, in the Book of Jesus. 

This reaction was for a season complete. No poetry, no 
fiction, no belles-lettres, no philosophy, was borne with, un- 
less it professed homage to Christianity. And even after, 
through the influence of the " Edinburgh Review " and 
other causes, there was a partial revival of the skeptical 
spirit, it never ventured on such daring excesses again. It 
bowed before the Bible, although it was sometimes with the 
bow of a polite assassin, who had studied murder and man- 
ner both in the south. 

Nay, more. Scripture poetry began to be used as a model 
more extensively than even heretofore, alike by those who 
believed and those who disbelieved its supreme authority. 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, we name first, because 
they never lost faith in it as a word, or admiration of it as a 
poem ; and hence its language and its element seem more 
natural to them than to others. Campbell was attracted to 
it originally by his exquisite poetical taste. He came forth 
to see the " Rainbow," like some of the world's " gray fathers," 
because it was beautiful; but ultimately, we rejoice to know, 
he felt it to be the "rainbow of the covenant." He grew up 
to* the measure and the stature of his own poetry. Moore, 
like Pope, has been fascinated by its flowers ; and we find 
him now imitating the airy gorgeousness of the " Song of 
Songs," and now the diamond-pointed keenness of the Book 
of Ecclesiastes. Scott, as a writer, knew the force of Scrip- 
ture diction ; as a man, the hold of Scripture truth upon the 
Scottish heart ; as a poet, the unique inspiration which flowed 
from the Rock of Ages ; and has, in his works, made a mas- 
terly use of all this varied knowledge. Rebecca might have 
been the sister of Solomon's spouse. Her prose speeches 
rise as the sound of cymbals, and her "Hymn" is immortal 
as a psalm of David. David Deans is only a little lower 
than the patriarchs ; and time would fail us to enumerate the 
passages in his better tales, which, approaching near the line 
of high excellence, are carried beyond it by the dexterous 
and sudden use of " thoughts that breathe," or "words that 
burn," from the Book of God Byron, Godwin, Shelley, and 
Hazlitt, even, are deeply indebted to the Bible. Byron, in 
painting "dark bosoms"" has often availed himself of the 
language of that book, which is a discerner of the thoughts- 



372 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, 



and intents of the heart. Many of his finest poems are just 
expansions of that strong line he has borrowed from it — 

" The worm that cannot sleep, and never dies." 

His " Hebrew Melodies" have sucked out their sweetness 
from the Psalms ; and " Cain," his noblest production, em- 
ploys against God the power it has derived from his Book. 
Godwin was originally a preacher, and his high didactic tone, 
h^s measured and solemn march, as well as many images and 
many quotations, especially in '"St. Leon" and " Mandeville," 
show that the influence of his early studies was permanent. 
When Shelley was drowned, it was rumored that he had a 
copy of the Bible next his heart ; " and," says Byron, " it 
would have been no wonder, for he was a great admirer of it 
as a composition." The rumor was not literally correct, but 
was so mythically. It is clear to us that Shelley was far ad- 
vanced on his way to Christianity ere he died, and was learn- 
ing not only to love the Bible as a composition, but to ap- 
preciate its unearthly principles — that disinterested heroism 
especially which characterizes Christ and his Apostles. In- 
deed he was constituted rather to sympathize with certain 
parts of its morale, than with the simple and terse style of 
its writing. It was the more mysterious and imaginative 
portion of it which he seems principally to have admired, and 
which excited the rash emulation of his genius, when he pro- 
jected a variation of "Job." Hazlitt's allusions to Scripture 
are incessant, and are to us the most interesting passages in 
his works. He was a clergyman's son ; and in youth, the 
Bible had planted stings in his bosom, which none of his 
after errors, in thought or life, were able to pluck out. 
" Heaven lay about him in his infancy," and his comparison 
of the Bible with Homer, and his picture of the effects of its 
translation into English, show that the earnest though erring 
man 'never altogether saw its glory 

"Die away, 
And fade into the light of common day." 

This is one of the features in Hazlitt's writings which 
exalt them above Lord Jeffrey's. Scotchman though he was, 
we do not recollect one eloquent or sincere-seeming sentence 
from his pen about the beauties of the Bible. Such writers 
as SheridaUj Rogers, Alison, Dugal Stewart, Lord Erskine, 



AND EFFECTS OP SCRIPTURE POETRY. 



373 



William Tennant, Mrs. Hemans, and a hundred others, are 
suffocated in flowers ; but not a word, during all his long 
career, from the autocrat of criticism, about Moses, Isaiah, 
Job, or John. To have praised their poetry, might have 
seemed to sanction their higher pretensions ; and might, too, 
have reflected indirect credit upon that school of fervid poets, 
who were sitting at the feet of Jewish men, as well as of 
Cumberland mountains. Need we name, finally, Chalmers 
and Irving — those combinations of the prophet of the old, 
and the preacher of the new economy ? 

Our living writers have, in general, shown a sympathy 
with the Hebrew genius. We speak not merely of clergy- 
men, whose verdict might by some be called interested, and 
whose enthusiasm might unjustly be thought put on with 
their cloaks. And yet we must refer to Millman's " Fall of 
Jerusalem," and to Croly's magnificent " Salathiel." Keble, 
too, and Trench, Kingsley. William Anderson, are a few out 
of many names of men who, while preaching the Bible doc- 
trine, have not forgotten its literary glories, as subjects of 
earnest imitation and praise. But the Levites outnumber 
and outshine the priests in their service to the bards of the 
Bible. Isaac Taylor's gorgeous figures are elaborately copied 
from those of Scripture, although they sometimes, in com- 
parison with them, remind you of that root of which Milton 
speaks — 

"The leaf was darkish, and had prickles in it, 
But in another country, as he said. 
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil" 

The Eastern spirit is in them ; they want only the Eastern 
day. Sir James Stephen has less both of the spirit and the 
genuine color, ardent as his love of the Hebrews is. Ma- 
caulay quotes Scripture, as Burdett, in Parliament, was wont 
to quote Shakspeare — always with triumphant rhetorical 
effect, and seems once, at least, to have really loved its lite- 
rature. Professor Wilson approaches more closely than any 
modern since Burke, to that wild prophetic movement of 
style and manner which the bards of Israel exhibit — nay, 
more nearly than even Burke, since, with Wilson it is a per- 
petual afflatus : he is like the he-goat in Daniel, who came 
from the west, and touched not the ground ; his " Tale of 
Expiation," for instance, is a current of fire. Thomas Carlyle 
25 



374 

concentrates a fury, enhanced by the same literary injGiuences, 
into deeper, straiter, more molten and terrible torrents. 
Thomas Aird has caught the graver, calmer, and more epio 
character of the Historical Books, especially in his " Nebu- 
chadnezzar," which none but one deep in Daniel could have 
written. From another poem of his, entitled " Herodion and 
Azala," we quote two etchings of prophets : — 

" Winged with prophetic ecstasies, behold 
The Son of Amos, beautifully bold, 
Borne like the scythed wing of the eagle proud, 
That shears the winds, and climbs the storied cloud 
Aloft sublime ! And through the crystalline, 
Glories upon his lighted head doth shine. 



Behold ! behold, uplifted through the air. 
The swift Ezekiel, by his lock of hair ! 
Near burned the Appearance, undefinedly dread, 
Whose hand put forth, upraised him by the head. 
Within its fierce reflection, cast abroad, 
The Prophet's forehead like a furnace glowed. 
From terror half, half from his vehement mind, 
His lurid hair impetuous streamed behind." 

From a hint or two in Scripture, he has built up his 
vision of hell, in the '' Devil's Dream upon Mount Acksbeck," 
a vision mysterious, fiery, and yet distinct, definite, and fixed, 
as a frosted minster shining in the moonlight. But in his 
" Demoniac," he absolutely pierces into the past world of Pal- 
estine, and brings it up with all its throbbing life and thau- 
maturgic energies, its earth quaking below the footsteps, and 
its sky darkening above the death of the Son of God. 

Of the rising poets of the day, " two will we mention 
dearer than the rest ;" dearer, too, in part, because they have 
sought their inspiration at its deepest source — Bailey, of 
" Festus," and Yendys, of " The Roman." This is not the 
place to dilate on their poetical merits. We point to them 
now, because, in an age when so many young men and young 
poets are forsaking belief in the oracular and divine inspira- 
tion of the Bible, they have rallied around the old shrine, 
have expressed their trust in that old and blessed hope 
of the Grospel, and may be hailed as morning stars, prog- 
nosticating the rising of a new " day of the Lord." May 
their light, already brilliant and far seen, shine " more and 



AND EPPECnrS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 375 

more," not only into its own, but into the world's "perfect 
day." 

We have not nearly exhausted the text of this chapter, 
nor alluded to a tithe of the writers in this or in other lands, 
who have transmitted their deep impressions of Scripture 
poetry to others. But it may now be asked,, is not all this 
exceedingly hopeful ? What would you more ? Is not the 
Bible now an acknowledged power 1 Is it not doing its work 
silently and effectually, through the many men of genius who 
are conducting its electric force ? Must not its future ca- 
reer, thereforCj be one of clear and easy triumph 1 So, in- 
deed, it might at first sight appear ; but there have arisen 
certain dark and lowering shadows in the sky, threatening to 
overcloud the sun-path of the Book, if not to darken it 
altogether ; and to a calm and candid, though brief and im- 
perfect, examination of these, we propose devoting our clo- 
sing chapter. 



CONCLUSION. 

FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 

No theories, so far as we are aware, have been openly pro- 
mulgated, or elaborately defended, upon exactly this ques- 
tion in the present day. But, from the mass of prevailing 
opinions on cognate topics, there exhale certain floating no- 
tions, which it may be perhaps of some importance to catch 
in language, and to try by analysis. 

Let a quiet and earnest inquirer take up a copy of the 
Scriptures, and ask himself, " What is to be the future his- 
tory of this Book ?" We suspect the following alternatives 
would come up before him : — It may, by the progress of 
science and philosophy, be exploded as a mass of impostures, 
myths, and lies ; or it may, shorn of its fabulous rays, be re- 
duced to its true level, as a revelation of spiritual truth ; or 
it may, owing to its great antiquity, and the leaden mists 
which lie around its cradle, continue, as it is at present to 
many scholars and philosophers, a book of dubious author- 



376 FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 

ship and truth, and may, perhaps, be thrown aside as a work 
for ages popular, but now obsolete, without any definite ver- 
dict having been passed upon its claims ; or it may be ful- 
filled, certified, supplemented, and, in a great measure, super 
seded by a new and fuller revelation. 

The first of those conjectures, for we freely grant that a 
little of the conjectural adheres to more than one of the 
theories, is so gloomy, and so improbable, that we must apo- 
logize for naming, and still more for seeking to refute it. 
The Bible a mass of myths and impostures, alternating — as 
though jEsop's Fables and Munchausen's Travels were 
bound up together in one monstrous medley, more mon- 
strously pretending to be the Book of God ! Myths, indeed, 
fables, stories, passages manifestly metaphorical, poetic 
hyperlDoles, and those of every sort, there are in Scripture ; 
but they are all manifestly and by contrast so. The body 
of the book is either historical or doctrinal ; and to " charge" 
figure upon figure in such a clumsy style, were no true 
heraldry. Jotham's story of the " trees" is a fable, but is 
Jotham himself? The parables of Jesus are truth-possess- 
ed fictions.; but is Jesus, too, a figure of speech; or, at 
least, the mere Alexander Selkirk to the teeming brain of an 
ancient Defoe ? No ! the historic and didactic element in 
Scripture is a layer of light piercing through all the rest, 
and at once expounding and preserving the whole. Indeed, 
in the double form of Scripture, we see a pledge of its per- 
petuity. The figurative beauty above glorifies the truth, 
and the hard truth below solidifies the hovering splendor. 
And, besides, the question is irresistible — were the Bible 
such a wild, accidental, amomalous mixture, could it have 
produced such miracles of healing power, and have so long 
remained unanalyzed '2 Even granting that strange unassimi- 
lated elements have met together in it, have they not formed 
a whole so united, so well-cemented, that ages have conspired 
to own in it the hand of God ? The difiiculty of the com 
pound was such, that it must have issued either in a dis 
graceful failure, or in a success, the wonder of the universe ! 
Could it have been made by any other but a divine hand? 

But here a second theorist steps in, and says, '^ I grant 
the book, as a whole, true. I recognize your distinction be- 
tween its myths and its histories, its figures and its doc- 
trines ; but I find in it many records, pretending to be his- 



FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 377 

torical, and lying mixed with the histories, which I cannot 
believe. I meet with miracles ! And these seem to me such 
monstrous violations of the laws of nature, so opposed to 
general experience, bearing such a suspicious family-likeness 
to the portents and prodigies found in the history of all early 
faiths, and encumbered in their details with such difficulties, 
that I am compelled to deem them fabulous, and to expect 
and accept an analysis which shall separate them from the 
real and solid principles of Christianity. 

Upon this subject of miracles, let us proceed to sum up 
what we conceive to be the truth, in the following remarks : — 

Now we grant that, firstly, miracles must be tried not 
only by the test of the evidence in their favor, but by the 
character of the system they were wrought to prove, which 
introduces a new element into the discussion, nay, makes it a 
discussion entirely new. Secondly, That, instead of miracles 
being the strongest evidence of Christianity, Christianity ap- 
pears to us a far stronger proof of miracles : a book so divine 
as the Bible cannot be supposed mistaken in its facts. Third- 
ly, That the chief things in Scripture which stagger the 
Christian are not likely to be the most powerful in convincing 
the enemy. Fourthly, That miracles seldom seem to have 
made converts either among those who originally witnessed 
them, or among those who have since heard the echo of their 
report. And fifthly. That miracles were wrought, not so 
much to convert individuals, as to decorate and magnify the 
system, which clothed itself even in its cradle with those 
awful ornaments, rung no bell save the "great bell of the 
universe," and used no playthings but the thunderbolts of 
God. But then, we ask, if miracles be false, how comes it 
that they are connected irith what is granted to be substan- 
tially a divine revelation? Again, we maintain that the 
difi"erence between the prodigies of profane history and the 
miracles of Jesus is immense : the latter were attested by the 
character of the person, the character of the faith, and the 
pure and benevolent purposes for which they were wrought, 
not to speak of the confession of some of the adversaries, and 
the impossibility of explaining otherwise the instant atten- 
tion and impetus the faith of the Carpenter received. And, 
once again, we deny that miracles can be explained, as the 
able and Christian author of " Alton Locke " tries to do, by 
the operation of unknown natural causes, or resolved, with 



378 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 

Carlyle, into "Natural Supematuralism." For, first, this 
does not remove the difficulty — How came Jesus to the know- 
ledge of such occult principles — principles no philosopher 
has since discovered ? Secondly, Is not the multiplication of 
bread in the miracle of the loaves and fishes very similar to 
the " supplying of an amputated limb ?"* Is not each a cre- 
ation ? and who but -a God can create ? Knowledge of occult 
principles might have enabled Christ to heal obstinate dis- 
eases, but not positively to make something out of nothing ! 
Thirdly, Does not the restoration of life to a dead and putrid 
body seem to run altogether counter to nature's course ? for, 
although nature revives and restores, it is never the " same 
body" — she deals in transformation, not resurrection. Where- 
fore the raising of Lazarus seems designed as a deliberate 
anomaly, a grand and sovereign setting aside of a natural 
law, to produce a moral effect. Fourthly, Is not the excep- 
tional aspect of miracles a proof that they were rather a tem- 
porary triumph over nature, than an evolution of some of its 
own inner laws ? Why did miracles cease ? Why did the 
knowledge of those occult principles die out of the Church ? 
And why is the re-appearance of miracles predicted always in 
connection with the return of the Saviour from heaven, when 
HE shall raise the dead, and convene before him all nations, 
thus again, through his divine power, triumphing over the 
laws of nature? If such astonishing future changes had 
been the mere blossoming of natural principles, they had not 
been uniformly traced to the personal agency of Christ Jesus. 
Fifthly, This view of miracles, as mysterious, occasional, and 
fluctuating infractions of natural laws, is, we think, most in 
keeping with the actual history of Christ. Had his powers 
of working miraclos sprung from his knowledge of occult 
principles, it had always been alike, and had been exerted in 
a more systematic manner, and on a broader scale. As it 
was, it is used with severe economy, and is preceded some- 
times by ardent and yearning prayer to the Father, as if he 
were reluctant to interfere with the solemn and measured 
roll of his laws. He says, too, repeatedly, " I am come to do the 
ivorks of my Father" — not to observe his laws, but to perform 
works as distinctly creative and divine as his fiat, " Be light, 
and there was light." Sixthly, This power of suspending tha 

* This Mr. Kingsley specially desiderates. 



*»iS 







WMi ' 



FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 



381 



laws of his Father's creation — a power possessed by Christ, 
and bestowed, through him, on his apostles, as it had been on 
some of the prophets, is quite in keeping with his peculiar 
and abnormal character, as being the strangest and sublimest 
birth in the universe, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, 
and yet the ofi'spring of the miraculous conception, and the 
Son of the Blessed — who is still a glorious anomaly in heaven 
as he was on earth — and with the wondrous and solitary 
work which was given him to do. We never see in him the 
philosopher working his way to his result, upon natural prin- 
ciples — but the Son walking in his Father's house, and hav- 
ing " authority" to issue what commandments, to diseases or 
demons, to waves or winds, to life or death, it pleased him. 

But why, Alton Locke will ask again, should the laws of 
nature ever require suspension ? When once satisfied of the 
fact, many reasons occur to account for it. One may 
be, to show that these laws are not eternal and unchange- 
able, and that it is thus impossible to confound them with 
their author — for what is not eternal and unchangeable can- 
not be God. Miracles confute Pantheism. All cannot be 
Grod, since here is something which is not, in the Pantheist's 
sense, God, and yet has heen. Miracles prove the dependence 
of matter upon God, who in an instant can repeal his most 
steadfast laws. Miracles evince the power of spirit over 
matter. What can show us this in a more striking light, 
than the sight of Jesus rebuking the thousand brute waves 
of the Galilean lake ? Miracles prove God's boundless love 
to the family of man ; for it was for his sake that such a 
power was intrusted to his Son. Miracles represent God as 
possessing a liberty to act, if we may use the expression, in 
diflerent styles at different times — now in that of regular 
and unvaried sequence, and again in sudden and mystic 
change. A hundred other reasons of a similar nature might 
be adduced. 

Have these miracles, then, been wrought ? Devoutly do 
we believe that they have ; but we are not at all sanguine of 
their power as an argument with the infidel. Till he has 
learned to appreciate the moral and spiritual aspects of the 
religion of Jesus, he will continue, we fear, to stumble at 
that old stumbling-stone. But if he persist in his insolent 
assertion, that the miraculous part of Christianity shall soon 
be shorn away as fabulous, we must answer, " Thou fool, who 



382 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 

art thou that repliest against God ? He that wrought mi- 
racles in the past, is able to work more, and mightier, in the 
future ; and beware thou lest they may be miracles of judg- 
ment. The Saviour who came last in swaddling-bands, is 
again to be revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance upon 
them who know not Grod, and obey not the gospel of Jesus 
Christ." 

Suppose that the credit of the supernatural portion of 
the Bible were to fall, what would be the general results ? 
First, Those who base their belief in Scripture on its miracles, 
would rush into skepticism. Secondly, Those who did not, 
would yet be surrounded by peculiar and formidable difficul- 
ties — by such questions as why has Grod produced such deep 
and general efi"ects by a tissue of falsehoods ? and why has 
he connected that tissue so closely with a web of truth ? 
must not the truth, power, and beauty so misplaced, be hu- 
man instead of divine ? Yes, the Book would instantly be 
degraded, if not destroyed — discrowned, if not banished. 
The strange mantle it had worn, with all those starry and 
mysterious ornaments, would fall from it ; it could scarcely 
be recognized as the same ; and, if ceasing to be a '• Prince," 
would it remain a " Saviour ?" 

Others — probably, however, a small class — may be in- 
clined to support a third theory : this, namely, that we never 
can satisfy ourselves now, more than we have done, as to the 
claims of the Bible — that the question is a moot and inso- 
luble point, like those of the '^ Iron Mask," the guilt of 
Queen Mary, and the authorship of "Junius" — that it is a 
question which is likely to decline in interest, as man be- 
comes more advanced in culture — and that by and by it may 
be dropped silently out of mind, like the controversies of the 
schoolmen, without having attained any definite or absolute 
resolution. But it is surely not probable that Grod would 
allow a question involving such vast and vital interests to 
remain unsettled, or to pass into the dim limbo of unresolved 
and half-forgotten logomachies. Hitherto, the result of all 
new discoveries has been to dart new notice, new light, new 
interest, upon the pages of this marvellous book, which, like 
the full moon, shines undimmed, whatever stars come up the 
midnight. (In her majestic simplicity, she fears no rival 
among all those new telescopic orbs, which are arriving every 
hour, and can suffer no eclipse from them ; and neither need 



FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE, 383 

th<» Bible, in its pure, and mild, and crystal sphere, be 
alarmed at all the starry revelations of science.) Nor will 
man allow this question to sink into obscurity, or to be buried 
in everlasting indifference. Nay, he seems even now to be 
girding himself for a more minute, earnest, and persevering 
inquiry into the claims of the Book. To solve this problem, 
many of the noblest of the race have sat down, like Archi- 
medes, gluing themselves to the task, determined to conquer 
or to die. This mighty and awful shade, like the " dead ma- 
jesty of buried Denmark," such bold watchers must at all 
hazards bespeak, to ascertain its actual nature, and to gather 
real tidings ; this, thing, so majestical, they must cross, 
though it blast them. The Bible forgotten ! There never 
was an age when there was less danger of that. It is not 
merely that its unequalled literary power secures its vitality, 
but that over it, as a professed revelation from God, there 
has begun a keen, hotly-contested fight, closing every day 
into deadlier earnestness, and which, at no very distant pe- 
riod, promises to be finally decided. 

Such is the threefold skeptical expectation. It is, in all 
its phases, melancholy, and tends to teach nothing but an 
evangel of despair. Should the Bible sink, what remains ? 
Where are we to find a substitute for it ? What manual of 
duty so broad and practical? What narrative so broad, hu- 
mane, and melting 1 What book of genius so full of the 
pith and lustihood of primeval manhood ? Where another 
such two-edged sword, baring, on the one side, the bosom of 
God, and, on the other, the heart of man ? Where a book 
with such a Gospel ? Where another such combination of 
truth so humble, power so meek, virtue so merciful, poetry 
so holy, beauty so condescending, celestial wisdom so affable? 
A book of which all this is true found a cheat — an old wives' 
fable — swarming with lies, or saved only from the charge, 
under the plea of the dotage of age ! Alas ! alas ! And 
suppose a substitute found — suppose, by some conjunction of 
mental forces, extraordinary as that of material, which is 
said to have produced the deluge, another book written, 
equally wide and equally intense, equally sublime and equally 
useful, equally profound and equally plain — which should 
mete the ocean of this troubled age in its span, and weigh 
its great mountains and its small dust of doubts and difiicul- 
ties alike in its balance, and be hailed by exulting millions 



384 FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 

as divine — and where the security for its permanent power ? 
who should dare to say that it, too. might not outlive itself— 
wax old, and vanish away, after enduring the pains and pen- 
alties, the contempt and insults, which track dishonored age 
to^the dust, and cause it to cry to the rocks of neglect and 
to the mountains of obscurity to cover it ? Then, too, might 
the Bible say to it — " Art thou also become weak as I ? I, 
too, once caused my terror in the land of the living, and was 
even believed to stretch my sceptre over the shadowy man- 
sions of the dead." 

As never book so commanded, roused, affrighted, glad- 
dened, beautified, and solemnized the world, so the hor- 
rors of its fall are too frightful almost for conception. We 
were borne away in vision to see this great sight — in 
vision only, thank Grod ! ever to be seen. We saw this 
new plague of darkness passing over the world. As it 
passed, there was heard the shriek of children, mourning 
for their New Testaments, and refusing to be comforted 
because they were not. There arose, next, the wail of wo- 
men : of mothers, whose hope for their dead babes was put 
out ; of wives, whose desire for the salvation of their hus- 
bands was cruelly quenched ; of aged matrons, whose last 
comfort, as they trembled on the verge of eternity, was ex- 
tinguished. Then came a voice, saying, " Philanthropists, 
abandon your plans of universal amelioriation, for the glad 
tidings to all people have died away ! Preachers of the 
world, pause on your pulpit stairs : your message is a lie ! 
Poets, cut your gorgeous dreams of a Millennium in sunder: 
they are but dreams, and the dream-book is dead ! Mission- 
aries, throw down your sickles : the '• end of the world" ye 
may see, its " harvest" never ! Poor Negroes, Caffrarians, 
and Hindoos, look no more upwards to those teachers, once 
deemed to drop down honey and milk on your parched lips : 
they are the retailers of exploded fables ! Millenarians — ^ye 
who hoped that the world would soon be touched by the 
golden spur of Jesus, and to spring onwards to a glorious 
goal — " Why stand ye gazing up into heaven ?" Heaven 
there is none, and no Saviour is preparing to descend ! Bear- 
ers of that corpse to the grave, cast it down, and flee ; for he 
that fell asleep in Jesus fell asleep in a lie, and if ye sow in 
hope, ye are liars, too ! Poor prisoner in the cause of hu- 
manity — poor slave, turn not your red and swollen eyes to 



FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 



38s 



heaven, for on the side of your oppressors there is power, 
and ye have no helper ! Stop your prayers, ye praying ones, 
for the Great Ear is shut — nay, it was never open ! Dying 
sinner, clench thy teeth in silence : hope not, for there is no 
pardon ; fear not, for there is no punishment ! But, while 
prayer, and praise, and the cheerful notes of Christian and 
hopeful toil — the voice of the Bridegroom rejoicing over his 
bride, united by the sacred tie of Christian marriage — and 
the voice of the Christian mother, bending and singing over 
the cradled features, where she reads immortality — and all 
melodies which have wedded Christian hope to poetry and 
music, should be for ever dumb, let the maniac howl on, and 
the swearer curse, and the atheist laugh, and the vile person 
sneer and gibber, and the hell-broth of war bubble over in 
blood, and the sound of the scourge become eternal as the 
growth of the cane ; and if mirth there be, let it be ex- 
pressed in one wild and universal dance between a grave for 
ever closed below, and a heaven for ever empty, and shut, and 
silent, above !" — All this we saw and heard, and, starting 
from a slumber more hideous than death, found our Bible in 
our bosom, and behold it was but a dream ! 

"Again in our dream, and the vision was new." We 
stood in the midst of a great plain, or table-land, with dim, 
shadowy mountains far, ftir behind and around, and a black, 
midnight, moonless sky above. A motley multitude was met, 
filling the whole plain ; and a wild, stern hum, as of men 
assembled for some dark one purpose, told us that they were 
assembled to witness, or to assist at, a sacrifice. In the 
midst of the plain, there towered a huge altar, on which crack- 
led and smoked a blaze, blue, livid, and the spires of which 
seemed eyes, eager and hungrily waiting for their victim and 
prey. Around, "many glittering faces" were looking on. 
They were the faces of the priests, who appeared all men of 
gigantic stature. Their aspects otherwise were various. Some 
seemed, like the flames, restlessly eager ; others seemed timid, 
were ghastly pale, and looked ever and anon around and 
above ; and in the eyes of one or two there stood unshed 
tears. Above them, in the smoke, dipping at times their 
wings in the surge of the fire, and frequently whispering in 
the ears of the priests, we noticed certain dark and winged 
figures, the purpose in whose eyes made them shine more 
fiercely far than the flames, and sparkle like the jewelry of 



386 FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 

hell. On the altar there was as yet no victim. All this ive 
saw as clearly as if noon had been resting on the plain, for 
all, though dark, shone like the glossy blackness of the ra- 
ven's wing. We asked in our astonishment, at one standing 
beside us, " What meaneth all this ? What sacrifice is this ? 
Who are these priests?" And he replied, "Know you not 
this ? These priests are the leaders of the new philosophy — 
the successors of those who, in the nineteenth century, sapped 
the belief of the nations in the Bible. They have met to burn 
the Bible, and to renew society through its ashes. " And is 
all the multitude of this mind?" The majority are ; but a 
few are so weak as to believe that the book will be snatched 
by a supernatural hand from the burning ; and it is said that 
even two or three of the priests share at times in the foolish 
delusion : but I laugh at it." " But who are those winged 
figures?" " Winged figures," he replied ; " I see them not." 
And he looked again. " Yes," we said, " with those plumes 
of darkness and eyes of fire." His countenance fell ; he 
stared, trembled, and was silent. It appeared that the mul- 
titude saw not tJiem. 

The hum of the vast congregation meanwhile increased, 
like that of many waves nearing the shore. At last, voices 
were heard crying, " It is time : forth with the old imposture." 
And it was brought forth, and one of the priests, a gray- 
haired man, took it into his hands. "Who is this?" we 
asked. " He was once," said our neighbor, " a believer in the 
Bible, and has been chosen, therefore, to cast it into the 
flames, and to pronounce a curse over it ere it is cast." 
Words would fail us to describe the multitude when the 
Book appeared. Some shouted with savage joy, others mut- 
tered curses, "not loud, but deep." One cried, "It mad- 
dened my mother." Another, " It made my sister drown 
herself" A third, " It has cost me many a night of agony." 
Some we saw weeping, and wiping away their tears, lest they 
should be seen ; and other some looking up with the protest 
of indignation and appeal to Heaven. One face we noticed — 
that of a youth ; and there was a poet's fire in his eye, who 
seemed about to speak in the Book's behalf, when one beside 
put his hand to his lips and held him back from his purpose, 
like a hound by the leash. And methought we heard, half- 
stifled in the distance, from a remote part of the assembly, a 
deep hollow voice, saying "Beware !" 



FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 387 

The priest approached the altar, held the volume over 
the flames, and uttered the curse. What it was, we heard 
not distinctly, for each word was lost in loud volleys of ap- 
plause, which the priests began, and the vast multitude re- 
peated. But as he held it in his grasp, and was uttering his 
slow maledictions over it, we saw the Book becoming radiant 
with a strange lustre, brightening at every word, as if it were 
uttering a silent protest, and giving the lie in light to the 
syllables of insult. And when he ceased, there was silence ; 
and he is about to drop the Book into the burning, when a 
voice is heard saying, not now, in a whisper, but as in ten 
thunders — " Beware !" and, turning round, we saw, speeding 
from the mountain boundary of the plain, the figure of a man 
— his eyes shining like the sun — his hair streaming behind 
him — his right hand stretched out before. And as the mul- 
titude open, by their trembling and falling to the ground, a 
thousand ways before him ; and as the old priest stiffens into 
stone, and holds the Book as a statue might hold it ; and as 
the priests around sink over the altar into the flames, and 
the winged figures fly, he approaches, ascends, takes the 
Book, and, looking up to heaven and around to earth, ex- 
claims — " The Word of the Lord, the Word of the Lord en- 
dureth for ever !" And lo ! the altar seemed to shape itself 
into a throne, and the man sat upon it, and " the judgment 
was set, and the books opened." And again we awoke, and 
behold it was, and yet was not^ a dream. 

No ; for we think that we have thus expressed, in outline 
and allegory, a great reality. That the Bible is to go down, 
we believe as impossible as it were shocking ; but that there 
is a deep danger before it, a partial eclipse awaiting it, a 
" rock ahead," we are firmly persuaded. Nay, we are satis- 
fied that the dangers are so numerous and varied, that no 
pilot but one can rescue it, and in it, us, the church, the 
world ! 

The spread of skepticism is the most obvious of these 
dangers. That in past ages seemed to stagnate, unless when 
it was fanned by the breath of political excitement, or forced 
on by the influence of some powerful genius, or unless its 
waters were strengthened by the foul tributary flood of licen- 
tiousness. Now it is more of an age tendency — a world-wide 
calm and steady current — -a tide advancing upon young and oldj 
wise and foolish, vicious and moral, cold and hot, male and fe- 
26 



388 FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 

male, half-informed and learned, high and low. Skepticism 
has been found of late in strange places, even in the sanctu- 
ary of God. In proof of this, we have but to name Foster 
and Arnold, men of great though unequal name, of ardent re- 
ligious feelings, representing thousands, and who both died, 
torn and bleeding, in the breakers of doubt. The effects of 
this abounding and overflowing stream of tendency are most 
pernicious. It has made the rash and inconsiderate abandon 
churches, and openly avow their unbelief ; it has driven one 
species of the timid into the arms of implicit faith, and an- 
other into a shallow and transparent hypocrisy ; while, mean- 
time, the bigotry of some is hardening, and their narrowness 
closing up every day ; while others are, from various causes, 
"detained before the Lord;" and while a large class are 
striving to forget their doubts, amid the clatter of mechanical 
activities and the roar of the applauses by which the report 
of these is in public religious meetings always received. But 
on still the dark tide is flowing^ and alas ! gaining ground. 
One is reminded of a splendid drawing-room, in a room ad- 
joining to which a secret murder has been newly committed. 
Brilliant is the scene, gay the lights, beautiful the counte- 
nances, soft the music — a wall of mirrors is reflecting the vari- 
ous joy ; but below the feet of the company there is slowly 
stealing along the silent blood, biding its time, and too 
secure of producing, to hasten, the terrible eff'ects of its 
discovery. 

But how to meet and counteract this wide current ? 
Some say — laissez faire — it is good for us, quietly, to wait ; 
there was a similar tide in the days of the French Revolu- 
tion — it passed away, and the old landmarks were again seen, 
the stronger and dearer for the danger. And so it may be 
again. But there are important differences. That was, to a 
great extent, a political movement. It involved, too, more 
of a licentious spirit ; it was a revolt against the ten com- 
mandments ; it was supported, in a great measure, by practi- 
cal Antinomians. The movement now, is quieter, deeper — 
altogether irrespective of politics, and partly of morals. And 
though we were willing to let it alone, it will not let us. Its 
consequences, in the language of Burke, are " about us, they 
are upon us, they shake public security, they menace private 
enjoyment. When we travel, they stop our way. They in- 
fest us in town, they pursue us to the country." No; 



FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 389 

whether we can stop this current or not, it is vain to wait 
till it pass — vainer to seek to let it alone. 

Efforts indeed to check it are numerous, in the form of 
lectures and essays on the Evidences ; and of them we may 
say, valeant quantum valere. They browbeat insolent and 
shallow skepticism — they check the progress of individuals 
on their erroneous way — they at least add to the smoke of 
the right side of the field, if not to its eff"ectual defence or 
raking fire. But our hopes of all or any of them, including 
our own efforts in this volume, are, so far as general effect 
upon the skeptical mind is concerned, not very sanguine. 
The old Adam, the natural infidel tendency of the heart, 
strengthened at present by the contagion of that vast religious 
corpse, the Continent — by the perplexed state of the critical 
and metaphysical questions connected with the Evidences — • 
by the dominance of fashion, a false power, but waxing 
greater every day — and by the influence of a large portion 
of the press, is becoming too strong for our Melancthons, 
young or old ; who, besides, do but too manifestly evince 
that their own hearts are failing them for fear of those things 
which are coming upon the world. Books, accordingly, are 
loosened, each after each (like the horses from a E,ussian 
sledge, pursued by the wolves), in sacrifice to the destroyers ; 
who swallow all greedily, pause a moment, and then resume 
their pursuit and hungry howl. 

Associations, too, have been formed from which much 
good was expected. We have no desire to dwell on the 
faults, or to record the failure of such alliances. They re- 
semble rather an imperfect census of population, than a great 
conscription of active force. If in aught successful, they 
have been so rather in showing a sense of the danger and 
disease, than in providing the remedy. Earnest and good 
are their leaders and many of the followers; but they 
have excluded many who are better still — they have 
turned Catholicism into a party thing ; instead of generaliz- 
ing the particular, they have particularized the general, and 
their partial success has been altogether in keeping with their 
partial and poor idea. 

We have heard another plan suggested (indeed, we have 
the credit or discredit of it ourselves), that a meeting or com- 
mittee should be called, not to stereotype and circulate^ the 
points in which all average Christians agree, but to consider, 



390 FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 



first, the general question of the Christian Evidences ; and, 
secondly, the points on which Christians differ. Dr. John- 
son roared and stamped, a century ago, in behalf of another 
" Convocation of the Church of England ;" would God, we 
once thought, that a selection of the wise of all denomina- 
tions could be trusted to meet now in an oecumenical coun- 
cil, with no dictator but the invisible spirit of Jesus, to set- 
tle the many quick, subtle, and formidable questions which are 
at present stumbling their thousands, and embittering their 
millions ! Such an idea, however, we resign, because, first, 
the name " Utopian" is prepared to measure the plan already ; 
because, again, we know well how multijolied wisdom often 
becomes singular folly, convocated liberality the worst of 
bigotry — how a thousand in council will decree at night 
what every individual among them shall be ashamed of on 
the morrow — how fatal to human progress and the cause of 
Christian truth, have been the results, in written shape, of 
such meetings already ; and because, once again, the deci- 
sion of this supposed court, however " frequent and full," 
however well selected and well managed, could never in this 
age exert so much authority as a " Thus saith the Lord." 
proceeding from a single accredited messenger or prophet 
from heaven. 

Others continue to trust implicitly in old forms of faith 
and old shapes of agency, provided the first be made still 
more stringently orthodox^ and the second be intensified in 
energy and zeal. But, alas ! these agents are carrying now 
their shadows along with them to their work, and are finding 
that those they visit have theirs too ! They are bringing 
darkness to darkness ; or, too often, they gain a partial and 
mean triumph by dogmatizing down, instead of meeting 
fairly and kindly, the doubts they hear from the more intel- 
ligent of the poor, or the heathens. And while they are, by 
fair or by foul methods, breaking in upon the ignorant or 
brutified gloom of the masses at home or abroad, behind, 
with sure, noiseless footstep, the illuminated darkness of 
this twilight age is following in their track, shadowing their 
own souls, and by and by threatening to ingulf those of 
their converts too. 

Our agencies are doing a good work, and ought to be en- 
couraged ; our creeds are exerting still a powerful influence, 
and should not lightly be tampered with. But there is an 



FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 



393 



unbelief abroad which our agencies cannot reach, and there 
is also a faith abroad which our creeds cannot consolidate or 
contain. The assault our churches and our creeds are at 
present sustaining, is partly of light and partly of darkness ; 
and hence the strange peculiarity and difficulty of the Chris- 
tian's position. " The morning cometh, and also the night." 
Light is dawning in the East, but is it dawning at such an 
angle as to reach the valley of vision where he stands, or 
only to show how dark and dim that valley is ? That ques- 
tion he cannot fully answer, and must wait patiently till 
another do. 

Our agencies are excellent, but imperfect ; our creeds ex- 
cellent, but with something wrong in all of them. And till 
these imperfections be remedied, we calmly, yet fearlessly, 
expect the following phenomena — an increasing indifference 
to forms of faith ; a yearly increase of deserters from churches 
and public worship ; the increase, too, among a class, of a 
fashionable, formal, and heartless devotion ; the spread, on 
the one hand, of Popery and superstition, and of fanaticism 
and bigotry on the other, which shall each re-act into doubt 
by its very violence ; the increase of determination and 
unity among philosophical skeptics ; continued and fierce 
assaults on the bulwarks of the Bible from without — feebler 
and feebler resistance from within ; a growing impatience 
and fury on the subject in the general mind ; all the signs, 
in short, that the Book, as a religious authority, is tottering 
like an old crown, and must be supported from within or 
without, from around or from above. 

It is the very tale of the Jewish Temple, before the Ad- 
vent of Christ. It had fallen into comparative contempt ; 
it was under an enemy's hand ; it was not only forsaken of 
many men, but God 's fire was burning low upon the altar, 
and not a few voices were heard saying, " Raze, raze it to 
the foundation." Its young worshippers seem very generally 
to have forsaken it. Still Simeon and Anna, Joseph and 
Mary — in other words the old disciples — and the middle class 
of men and of women, were to be found faithfully worshipping 
— and Zacharias and Elisabeth were diligently ministering 
there. They still believed at once in its former divine con- 
secration, its present connection with heaven, and its future 
glory. And two events by and by convinced the laud and 
the world that their belief had been sound. 



394 



FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 



The first of these was the rise of the Baptist. He camo 
in haste, to announce the approach of the mightier than he. 
He roused the whole land by his startling words. And, 
" while he was yet speaking," the Master appeared. But have 
the words, " Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before 
the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord," been 
exhausted by his coming? Was the day he introduced a 
" dreadful day ? " Must there not be a reference in the 
prophecy to events still future ? We, for our parts, expect 
the Master to be again preceded by a forerunner. We have 
already seen (in " Paul") the qualifications that forerunner 
must possess. His work, like the Baptist's, may be partly 
conservative and partly destructive. "Down with all that 
oppresses the genuine spirit of Christianity, and impedes its 
free motions," shall be one of his cries. But " Hold to the 
Book with a death's grasp, till the Master come to explain, 
supplement, glorify it anew," shall be another. And a third 
and loudest shall be, " He is behind me ; the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." 

The full amount of impression such cries may produce 
we cannot tell. Rouse many they must ; check many they 
may ; fan the flame of hope in the hearts of many drooping 
believers they will. But they will not, nor are meant to stop 
the progress of the "mist of darkness," gathering on to that 
gloomiest hour which is to precede the dawning of the great 
day — an hour in which the Word of God may seem a waning 
moon, trembling on extinction, and in which every Christian 
heart shall be trembling too. " There shall be signs in the 
sun, and in the moon, and in the stars ; and upon the earth 
distress of nations, ivitli perjjlexity ; the sea and the waves 
roaring ; men's hearts failing them for fear^ and for looking 
after those things which are coming on the earth, for the pow- 
ers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the 
Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory." 

'Tis a remarkable saying which follows, " Heaven and 
earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." 
It is as if the Saviour anticipated the crisis which was before 
his "words." They are in danger of passing away — nay, 
they are passing away — when he comes down and says, " No, 
heaven and earth must pass awayfirst, must pass away in- 
stead ;" and they are straightway changed, and his waning 
words catch new light and fire from his face, and shine more 



FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. ^gt 



brightly than before. It is as it were a struggle between his 
works and his words, in which the latter are victorious. 

We are fast approaching the position of the Grecians on 
the plains of Troy. Our enemies are pressing us hard on the 
field, or from the Ida of the ideal philosophy throwing out 
incessant volleys. There are disunion, distrust^ disaflfection 
among ourselves. Our standard still floats intact, but our 
standard-bearers are fainting. Meanwhile our Achilles is re- 
tired from us. But just as when the Grecian distress deep- 
ened to its darkest, when Patroclus the " forerunner" had 
fallen, when men and gods had driven them to the very verge 
of the sea, Achilles knew his time was come, started up, sent 
before him his terrible voice, and his more terrible eye, and 
turned straightway the tide of battle ; so do we expect that 
our increasing dangers and multiplying foes, that the thou- 
sand-fold night that seems rushing upon us, is a token that 
aid is coming, and that our Achilles shall "no more be si- 
lent, but speak out," shall lift his 

"Bow, his thunder, his almighty arms" — 

" shall take unto him his great power and reign." And even 
as Cromwell, when he saw the sun rising through the mist 
on the field of Dunbar, with the instinct of genius, caught 
the moment, pointed to it with his sword, and cried, "Arise, 
God, and let thine enemies be scattered," and led his men 
to victory, let us accept the same omen, and breathe the same 
prayer. 

Nor does it derogate from the Bible to say, that it must 
receive aid from on high to enable it to " stand in the evil 
day, and having done all, to stand." It has nobly discharged 
its work ; it has kept its post, and will, though with diffi- 
culty, keep it, till the great reserve, long promised and always 
expected, shall arrive. It was no derogation to the old 
economy to say, that it yielded to the " New Schekinah " — it 
had accomplished its task in keeping the fire burning, al- 
though burning low, till the dayspring appeared ; nor is it a 
derogation to the New Testament to say, that it has carried, 
like a torch in the wind, a hope, two thousand years old, till 
it now seems about to be lost in the light of a brighter dis- 
pensation. 

And while the hope is to be lost in its fruition, what shall 
be the fate of the volume which so long sustained it? 



396 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 

What has been the fate of the Old Testament ? Has it not 
retained its reverence and power? Is it not every day in- 
creasing in clearness ? Has not the New Testament reflected 
much of its own radiance upon it? Do they not lie lovingly 
and side by side in the same volume ? And why should not 
the New Book of the Laws and Revelations of the Prince of 
the Kings of the earthi (if such a book there were) form a 
third, and complete the " threefold chord which is not easily 
broken?" And would not both the New and the Old Testa- 
ment derive glorious illustration from the influences and illu- 
minations of the Millennial Day ?* 

* To these views of the probable personal Advent of Chiist, ob- 
jections may be anticipated. It may be said, for instance, " Do you 
not in one place of the chapter lay little stress upon miracles ; and in 
another expect every thing from a future miraculous interference ?" 
But what have we said, after all, save that the miracles recorded in 
the New Testament have not converted the world ] But why should 
not other miracles, if conducted upon a grander scale, and accompa- 
nied with Christ's personal presence, effect a stupendous change upon 
it "? The raising of Lazarus did not move the obstinacy of the Jews ; 
but surely the raising or changing of all men would convince all men 
of the reality of the Saviour's power. What doubt but must expire 
in the blaze of judgment ? Surely there is a difference between mira- 
cles wrought during a state of probation, and miracles wrought to 
bring that state of probation to a close. It would seem, too, that 
punitive purposes are more contemplated in the miracles of the last 
dispensation, than those of conversion. " Behold, I come quickly, 
and my reward is with me, to give to every man according to his 
work." We can retort, too, upon our opponents, by saying, " You 
admit that the agency of the Spirit has not accomplished the work of 
converting the world, and yet you expect that event from a different 
measure of the same agency." 

It may be said next, "But might not the Spirit perform all 
the work?" We answer, undoubtedly; but, first, if a Pentecostal 
revival take place, it will, in all probability, like that of old, be ac- 
companied with miracles, and why not with the additional marvel of 
the Son's appearance ; especially as, secondly, we find the promise of 
his coming so frequently connected in Scri[)ture with the destruction 
of his enemies and the advancement of his Church ? If no Pentecostal 
revival be sent— if the Church is to proceed at its present creeping 
and crippled rate — when, we ask, is its Millennium to dawn 1 Shall 
it ever? No alternative can we see, but Jesus advenient, and prayer 
and work done in this pros])ect. or despair. 

We have in the text anticipated objections which might be urged 
to our belief in a " Forerunner." Such a being would answer the 
same end with the Baptist, He would encourage the friends and 
check the foes, till the hour for the Divine Man should strike. He 
might, in some measure, prepare the Church, if not the world, for the 



FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBI.E. 



397 



But the " scene is mingling with the heavens." Pisgah 
is past. Mount Zion itself is appearing. The city of God 
is bursting into view. But who shall describe that sight ? 
Prophets have seen the skirts of its glory, and fallen down 
as dead men. The changes and birth-pangs which shall 
usher in these new heavens and that new earth, we cannot 
even conjecture ; of the nature of that new theocracy we 
have but dim conceptions ; and our words, being necessarily 
faint, must be few. Suffice it, that it shall be a just govern- 
ment. It shall judge "righteous judgment." It shall judge, 
no longer by the outward appearance, but by the heart. It 
shall be a government of souls, as well as of bodies. It ahall 
be a government of commanding mildness — overbearing love. 
It shall be a government securing for the first time perfect 
liberty, brotherhood, and equality to the nations. It shall 
be the first government that ever united all interests in its 
care, and made all men equally happy under its dominion. 
It shall unite the race into one band of laborers, to 
develope the riches and beautify the surface of the 
planet. It shall unite the churches into one great 
throng of worshippers, " with one Lord, one faith, and 
one baptism." 

How beautiful, then, shall seem, renewed and glorified, 
this " great globe, the world !" The promises of ten thousand 
days of loveliness in the past, of innumerable mornings and 
evenings, or nights trembling all over with starry pulses of 
glory, shall be realized in the permanent aspects of earth 
and of sky. The prophecies of all genuine poets, since the 
world began, shall have a living fulfilment in the general 
countenance, and character, and heart of man. Nor shall 
the spirit of progress and aspiring change be extinct. To 

Advent, although both, in some measure, it shall, according to Scrip- 
ture, take by surprise. 

Bnt to defend this ancient "hope" of the Church is not our 
special purpose. "We recommend those who are ignorant alike of its 
grounds and its grandeur, to read Edward Irving's Preface to "Ben 
Ezra," a production little known, but in power, simplicity, and dignity, 
not equalled since the Apostles fell asleep, or equalled by the Areopa- 
gitica of Milton alone. And when shall George Croly, or William An- 
derson, write a great apology for this "hope that is in them," in a 
style which shall at once rebuke sciolists, convince inquirers, and 
blow a blast of mingled music and thunder to a sleeping Church and 
& gainsaying world 1 



398 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 

meet the new discoveries below, and the new stars and con- 
stellations flashing down always from the Infinite above, or 
drawing nearer and becoming brighter in the mystic dances 
of the heavens, men's minds must arise in sympathy and 
brighten in unison. Who shall picture what the state of 
society, and what the progress of human souls, at that astro- 
nomical era, when the Cross shall shine in our southern 
heaven, and the Lyre shall include our Polar star amid its 
burning strings ? Must there not then break forth from our 
orb a voice of song, holier than Amphion's, sweeter than all 
Orphean measures, comparable to that fabled melody by 
which the spheres were said to attune their motions ; com- 
parable, say, rather, to that nobler song wherewith, when 
earth, a stranger first appeared in the sky, she was saluted, 
by the " Morning stars singing together, and all the sons of 
Grod shouting for joy ?" 

Changes more stupendous still may follow. These skies 
may be entirely dissolved. This earth, notwitstanding all 
her wondrous history, may be removed like a cottage. The 
whole universe may be thrown into a new mould, or be used 
as mere scaffolding to some ulterior building of yet grander 
purpose, and more spiritual symmetry and beauty. The sun 
may " sleep on in his clouds, careless of the voice of the 
morning." The red eye of Sirius may shut upon his old 
battlefield. The Wolf may no more — 

*' With looks of lightning, watch the Centaur's spear." 

Orion may no longer pass in slow and martial pomp as a 
sentinel through the midnight heavens. The Milky Way 
may have shut its two awful arms, and ceased its dumb 
prayer. But let not the heart of the Christian tremble. 
His safety is independent of all materialism. His Saviour 
" made," and shall survive the " worlds." His soul, too, 
bears on it the stamp of absolute immortality. His earth 
may sink under his feet ; but the Pilot of the Gralilean Lake 
shall be there, and shall save the crew of the dear vessel. 
His skies may wither ; but there is a spiritual firmament for 
ever o'er his head, which shall get brighter every moment. 
His Bible may not be found in his hands ; but its truths 
shall be engraven on his heart, its pictures shall be written 
on his imagination, and the memory of its old powers and 
glories shall never decay. And what though star-spangled 



■^^ 



li'iSa 




1 



FUTURE DESTINY OP THE BIBLE. 



401 



veil after veil of matter fall, if, by the downfall of each, he 
be brought nearer and nearer to the Great Spirit ; and what 
though he leave room after room of splendor behind him on 
his rapid way, if he be approaching always — though never 
absolutely to reach — that " secret place of thundering," that 
"holiest of all," where dwells the always Old, the always 
Young, the All-Wise and the Ever-Silent, the Inscrutable 
and Eternal One ? 

Here we draw down the curtain, and drop the theme. If 
we have, in the volume now concluded, taught one man to 
love the Bible more, or one to hate it less — if we have stum- 
bled but one on his dreary way to the wrong side of the 
great Armageddon valley, or have cheered but one spirit that 
was trembling for the ark of Grod — if we have shot but one 
new pang of the feeling of the Bible's surpassing truth and 
beauty, across the minds of the literary public, or expressed 
but a tithe of our own youth-implanted and deep-cherished 
convictions and emotions on the surpassing theme, then this 
volume, with all its deficiencies, has not been written in 
vain. 

The spirit of the whole production seems to demand it to 
close in the words of a poet's invocation : — 

■" Come, then, and, added to thy many crowns, 

Receive yet one, the crown of all the best. 

Thou who alone art worthy ! It was thine 

By ancient covenant, ere nature's birth. 

And thou hast made it thine by purchase too, 

And overpaid its value by thy blood. 

Thy saints proclaim thee King, and in their hearts 

Thy title is engraven with a pen, 

Dipped in the fountains of eternal love. 

Thy saints proclaim thee King, and thy delay 

Gives courage to thy foes, who, could they see 

The dawn of thy last Advent, long desired, 

Would creep into the bowels of the hills, 

And flee for safety to the falling rocks. 

The very spirit of the world is tired 

Of its own taunting question asked so long, 

' Where is the promises of your Lord's approach V 
******** 

Come, then, and added to thy many crowns, 

Receive yet one, as radiant as the rest, 

Due to thy last and most eflfectual work, 

Thy work fulfilled, the conquest of a world." 



402 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 



SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 

THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPIURE. 

BEsmES the authors and poets of the Old and New Testa- 
ments, there are, in the course of both, a number of charac- 
ters depicted, teeming with peculiar and romantic interest, 
and who are abundantly entitled to the epithet poetical. It 
were unpardonable, in a book professing to include a sum- 
mary of all the poetical elements of the Book of God, to omit 
a rapid survey of these, neither mute nor inglorious, although 
no songs have they sung, nor treatises of truth recorded, but 
who, " being dead, yet speak" in the eloquence, passion, devo- 
tion, or peculiarity and wickedness, of their histories. We 
are, therefore, tempted to annex the following chapter, as an 
appendix to the volume. 

First among these, stands Adam himself. How interest- 
ing the circumstances of his formation ! Mark with what 
dignity Grod accompanied the making of m.an. Behold the 
whole Trinity consulting together ere they proceeded to this 
last and greatest work of the Demiurgic days. God had only 
said — " Let there be light, let there be a firmament, let the 
waters be gathered together, let the earth bring forth the 
living creature after his kind ;" but, when man was to be 
taken out of the clay, the style of the Deity rises, if we may 
so speak, above itself, and he says — " Let us make man after 
our own likeness." 

We may imagine ourselves present at this thrilling mo- 
ment. A mist is watering the face of the ground, and par- 
tially bedimming the sun. Slowly, yet mysteriously, is the 
red clay, drawn out of the ground, fashioned, and compacted 
into the shape of man, till the future master of the world 
is, as to his bodily part, complete, and lies, statue-like and 
stillj upon the dewy ground. But speedily, like a gentle 
breeze, the breath of the Lord passes over his face, and he 
becomes a living soul, and his eyes open upon the green glad 
earth, and the orb of day shining through a golden mist, and 
his ears open to the melodies, which seem to salute him as 
Lord of all, and he starts to his feet, and stretches out his 
hands to the sun as if to embrace it, and the mists disperse 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 403 

and the beams of noon show him Eden shining in all its 
beauty — the abode of man, and the garden of God. His 
emotions can no more be conceived than described. The 
infant is introduced step by step into the sight of the great 
temple of the creation. But it must have burst in all but an 
instant upon the view of the man-boy, Adam. His happiness, 
however, was not yet complete : he was still alone. And he 
could not be long in the world, till he desired a companion. 
The sun he could not grasp ; the moon, walking in her bright- 
ness, he could not detain ; the trees cooled his brow, but 
yielded no sympathy to his heart. His own shadow was but 
a cold and coy companion. And probably, while full of 
cravings after society, which mingled with and damped his 
new-born raptures of joy, he felt creeping over him the soft 
influences of slumber. He slept. There was sleep in Eden : 
perhaps there may be sleep in heaven ! Man was scarcely 
created till he slept ; and, while asleep, '• God took one of his 
ribs, and made of it woman ;" not of rude clay, but of the 
finished portion of a finished man, forming her from a finer 
material, and clothing her with a more fascinating loveliness. 
"He brought her to the man," as a companion to his joys, for 
sorrows as yet he had none, to talk with him in Eden, in the 
large sweet utterance of a tongue tuned and taught by God 
himself, to wander with him by the rivers of paradise, to be 
united to him by a tie of tender and indissoluble affection. 
With joy he welcomed her as the breathing essence — the per- 
fumed marrow of his own being — ^" bone of his bone, and flesh 
of his flesh ;" and surely we may believe that the harps of 
angels, as well as the glad sounds of nature, celebrated the 
happy union. 

This fair and noble product was made in '• God's im- 
age" — understanding not by this, as some suppose, his erect 
bodily form — a form possessed by apes as well as by men — 
but a similitude of mental and moral character, mingled to- 
gether in large and equal proportions. We deny not, indeed, 
that this may have expressed itself in the outward lineaments 
of our first parents, nor will call those mere enthusiasts who 
may tell us that Adam was fairer far than any of his sons, 
and Eve, than any of her daughters ; nay, that the sun is not 
more glorious than the face of the first man, nor the rising 
moon of evening more beautiful than that of the first woman. 
But the glory was chiefly mental and moral. Adam bore a 
27 



404 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS m SCRIPTURE. 

mental resemblance to his Maker. He had an ample intel- 
lect, a rich imagination, united together by a link of burning 
soul, as superior to that of Milton, who sang him in strains 
which shall never die, as that to the trodden worm. But he 
had not only a high, but a holy spirit — a conscience the most 
undefiled — a sense of duty electrically quick — affections sun- 
ning themselves in Grod — and a love pure and bright, and 
constant as the lamps which, while shining in the divine 
presence, owe their radiance to the divine eye. Eve, in a 
more soft and shadowy light, reflected the ardent splendors 
of his character. Alas ! that two such children should ever 
have erred, and that a crown so beautiful and so delicately 
woven, should have dropped from their heads ! 

Drop, however, it did. That first hour of the world's 
prime was as short as it was beautiful. Eden is gone, and 
gone for ever. It was but a spot in a dark earth, after all, 
supernaturally gilded, and its very wreck remains not. No 
more do its bowers shower " roses on the first lovers ;" no 
more do its streams murmur music in their ears ; no more 
are the shadows of mailed angels reflected in the four rivers ; 
no more is the voice of Grod heard in our groves, or in our 
gardens, in the cool of the day. But let the prospects of the 
future cheer us in the memory of the sorrows of the past. 
Let the breezes soon to begin to blow upon us from the land 
of Millennial rest — or, at all events, let the prospects of an 
eternal heaven, of a paradise in the skies, of a sun to which 
that of Eden was darkness, of rivers to which those of Eden 
were shallow and dumb, of groves to which those of Eden had 
no beauty and no music — console us for all that Adam had, 
and for all that Adam lost. 

Adam, in Genesis, is entirely, and, from the shortness of 
the history, necessarily, a representative person. He has no 
peculiarities of character, apart from his federal connection 
with the race. He seems but an outline, far and faint, which 
every imagination is left to fill up ; and thus, when he falls, 
we mourn not at all for him, nor for Eve, but for the general 
happiness lost, aud the general gulf of woe and wickedness 
opened. And it is one of Milton's greatest triumphs, that 
he has invested Adam and Eve with such an individual in- 
terest, that, at the tidings of their ruin, we grieve for them as 
for dear friends, and feel sadder for Eve's fiowers than for 
the whole federal catastrophe. 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPUTRE. 



405 



Of Cain, Adam's eldest son', too, we can hardly judge 
accurately or distinctly, apart from the many poetic shapes 
which, since the account of Moses, he has assumed, yet our 
idea of him may be uttered. Born amid great expectations, 
called by his mother " the man, the Lord," he grew up, dis- 
appointing every fond hope, and becoming a somewhat sullen 
drudge, "a tiller of the ground." Meanwhile, his younger 
brother is exhibiting the finer traits of the pastoral character. 
The " elder is made to serve the younger." Fiercely does 
the once-spoiled child kick against the pricks, till at last the 
fury of conscious inferiority breaks out in blood — the blood 
of Abel. Conscience-struck, hearing in every wind the voice 
of his brother's gore — nay, carrying it in his ear, as the shell 
carries inland the sound of ocean's waters — he flees from his 
native region, and a curse clings to him, and the whole story 
seems to prove — first, the evil of over-excited and disappointed 
hopes ; secondly, the misery of the murderer ; and thirdly, 
how Grod can deduce good from evil, and mingle mercy with 
judgment. Abel's blood probably promoted the separation 
of two races who had been too long mingled — the race of those 
who worshipped, and that of those who hated God ; and God 
was pleased, no doubt significantly, to let i\Q first shedder of 
man's blood escape. 

Poets have done with Cain as it seemed good in their 
own eyes. Gessner's " Death of Abel" is a somewhat mawk- 
ish, though rather elegant production, full of the first froth 
of that German genius, which seems now, so far as poetry is 
concerned, in its lees. Coleridge has given us a noble frag- 
ment, the "Wanderings of Cain" — the sweetest and most 
Scriptural of all his productions, but in which he tries to 
graft a new and strange machinery on the Scripture narra- 
tive, which he would have found it difficult to have reconciled 
with it, or to have managed in itself. Byron has dropped on 
the rude and sullen " tiller of the ground" a metaphysical 
moulting from his own dark wing. Yet his poem is a magni- 
ficent mistake, though, as really as that of Coleridge, it is a 
fragment. And Edmund Reade has tried to finish this ter- 
rible Torso, but the " foot of Hercules" seems to spurn him 
for his insolence in the attempt. 

Enoch, the seventh from Adam, enjoys a singular and 
short prominence in the early Scripture narrative. A few 
sentences sum up his history. All at once he is seen walk- 



4o6 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

ing with God. In a little while he is heard prophesying — 
" Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints ;" 
and again a little while, he is seen and heard of no more. 
"He was not, for Grod took him." No chariot of fire for 
him. He was taken, or lifted, away by God's own hand. It 
is a rumor of the Rabbis, that he was on the point of being 
murdered by an assemblage of the flood-deserving and flood- 
doomed children of Cain, when he disappeared ; he was not 
— he was melted down in God. It is remarkable, that, 
though the first of the prophets, he yet prophesied of the 
last event in the history of the world — the coming of the 
Lord. It is as if no event betwixt were majestic enough 
for him to touch — as if this coming of Christ from heaven 
best suited the tongue of him who, even on earth, was breath- 
ing the air of the upper paradise, and was, in a little while, 
to be caught up among the visions of God. Enoch's history 
rests, like a drop of glory, upon that ancient page. 

Having come to " this side of the flood " — omitting Ham, 
that sunburned giant of the old world, and Canaan, whose 
one mockery has been fearfully avenged — we see Nimrod, 
the mighty hunter, towering near the ruins of the Tower of 
Babel. A savage, primeval form he seems, looming large 
among the mists of the past, dressed in a reeking lion hide, 
measuring a wilderness of destructive creatures in his glance, 
and drawing a bow, from which you might fancy that shaft 
newly discharged which, as bold Chapman assures us, was 

" Shot at the sun by angry Hercules, 
And into shivers by the thunder broken." 

Indeed the Hercules of mythology is a composite of the 
Nimrod and the Samson of Scripture, with Nimrod's club in 
his hand, and Samson's strength and blind raging fury in his 
blood. 

We come next to Abraham, the " friend of God," the fa- 
ther of the faithful, the ideal of an ancient patriarch, a na 
tion in himself. His motions so total and sublime, like those 
of a cloud which "moveth altogether, if it move at all;" his 
constant connection in all his wanderings with heaven ; the 
knock of God coming to his peaceful tent, and the emphatic 
whisper which told him to go westward ; his fearless obedi- 
ence, although not knowing whither he went ; the sensation 
his advent and the altars which he raised made among the 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 



407 



degraded nations of Canaan; his progress, traced by the 
silent smoke of worship ; his sudden upstarting into a war- 
rior, at the news of Lot's captivity, and the brave deed 
of deliverance which he wrought for him ; the solemn 
moment when he was taken out by God i)elow the starry 
canopy, and told that these innumerable orbs were an em- 
blem of his seed for multitude ; the moment, more awful 
still, when, amid the fragments of his sacrificial victims, a 
deep sleep came upon him, and a horror of great darkness 
came with it ; his covenant, renewed again and again with 
Jehovah ; the coming of three angels to his tent, to announce 
the birth of Isaac : his passionate pleading with God in be- 
half of Sodom, then near to destruction — a pleading which 
more than once touches the brink of the presumptuous, and 
yet evites it by an hair's-breadth ; his sending forth of Hagar 
and her son Ishmael into the wilderness — a tale touching 
the inmost fountains of the heart ; and. above all, his princely 
journey to the Mount Moriah. with his son Isaac, " led as a 
lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers 
was dumb " — a scene where filicide itself seems just mount- 
ing into a sacrament, and the knife point of a son's sacrifice 
is reddening with glory, when God mercifully interferes to 
accept the will for the deed, and the ram for the child, are a 
few of the incidents of his remarkable story. 

The great charm of Abraham's character, is its union of 
simplicity with grandeur. He rises like one of those great 
stones which are found standing alone in the wilderness, so 
quiet in their age, so unique in their structure, and yet on 
which, if tradition be believed, angels have rested, where 
sacrifices have been ofi"ered up, and round which, in other 
days, throngs of worshippers have assembled. His prayers 
pierce the heavens with the reverent daring of one of the 
mountain altars of nature. He is at once a shepherd and a 
soldier. He is true to the living, and jealous of the honor 
of the ashes of the dead. He is a plain man, dwelling in 
tents, and yet a prince with men and God. Peace to his 
large and noble dust, as it reclines near that of his beloved 
Sarah, in the still cave of Machpelah. He was one of the 
simple, harmless, elephantine products of an age when it was 
not a •• humble thing to be a man," and when all the " giants 
in those days" were not robbers and oppressors. 

Across the history of Abraham there shoot two curious 



4o8 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 



episodical passages, both wrapt in the grandeur, and one in 
the gloom, of mystery. One is the story of Melchisedec. 
" Without father, without mother, without beginning of days 
or end of life," this man comes suddenly forth from Salem, 
meets Abraham on his way from the slaughter of the kings, 
presents bread and wine, blesses him, receives tithes of all 
the spoils, and disappears, whither, no one can tell. In our 
perplexity, we can scarce deem him a being of this earth. 
Was he an Antediluvian ? Had he witnessed the deep wa- 
ters ? Was he Shem ? Was his head covered with hair, 
which had been gray before the deluge ? Had that eye of 
his seen Adam and Eve ? Had his young hand toyed with 
their coats of skins ? Or was he a transient incarnatioL. of 
the Divinity — was this the Son stepping down upon the stage 
of his after labors before the time? We cannot tell. The 
mystery is as yet impenetrable. Stat nominis umbra. We 
know only that he was so great, that Abraham gave him a 
tenth part of the spoils — that he is called a king, a priest, 
and one of the most striking emblems of the Son of God. 
He is the only specimen of a dynasty of monarch priests, 
who remind us, in magnitude and in mystery, of the mighty 
creatures which tenanted the still cooling chaos of the pri- 
meval planet. 

A darker shade rests upon the cities of the plain. Im- 
agination shivers as she ventures to pass, with the " two an- 
gels," to the house of Lot, through the streets of the doomed 
cities on the last evening of their existence, and watches the' 
bubbling fulness of a cup, in which licentiousness, murder, 
blasphemy, and unnatural lusts, were the ingredients, and 
listens to the cry of the city's sin coming to its sharpest and 
shrillest pitch before the abused door of the patriarch. We 
feel the horrors of the night infinitely worse than the ter- 
rors of the day, and are almost relieved, when after the brief 
mockery of brightness, " when the sun rose upon Sodom," 
the sky darkens, as, since the deluge, it never darkened be- 
fore ; and there begin to be wafted down from above flakes 
of flame and masses of bitumen, and the guilty cities are 
lost to sight in the embrace of a storm of fire-snow, and over 
their smoking ruins rise the waters of the Dead Sea, and 
then the lustration is complete ; and from one of the fairest 
pages in nature's book the foulest blot of man's defilement 
IS in one morning, by the tongue of fire " from the Lord out 



TIIE POETICAL CHARACTERS IX SCRIPTURE. 409 

of heaven," licked for ever away. How succinctly do God 
and nature always deal with ripened transgression of their 
laws ! How needful such blood-lettings, when the blood has 
become desperately foul ! And how sure of recurring in 
every other age have those judgments hitherto been, as if 
to preserve the equilibrium of morals, and to prevent the 
permanent degradation of man, who is ever and anon aim- 
ing at a worse incarnation than his own, and, but for such 
fearful checks, would be "more vile" than the verv beasts of 
the field ! 

Abraham, in leaving Isaac behind him, left rather a shad- 
ow than a son. He has less body and bulk, les^ grandeur, 
less boldness, but shadow-like he kneels, and looks up to Grod 
in imitation of his original. He has all Abraham's piety, 
and more than his peace. His cast of mind is given in one 
sentence — '• And Isaac digged again the wells which they 
had digged in the days of x\braham his father." And when 
these wells become the subject of contest, he meekly retires 
in search of others. He is one among other proofs, that the 
children of very great men are sometimes inferior to their 
parents. The rationale of this may either be that the moth- 
ers are inferior to their mates, or that the education of the 
children of men, much engrossed in public affairs, is often 
neglected ; or that there is, what we may call, either an ex- 
haustion or an economy in nature, which makes the sight of 
two men of eminence in the same family, or of two men of 
eminence in the relation of father or son to each other, more 
rare than the reverse. Glorious exceptions will occur, such 
as David and Solomon, Chatham and Pitt, to the memory of 
our readers ; but still there have been a Solomon and a Re- 
hoboam, a Hezekiah and a Manasseh, an Oliver and a Rich- 
ard Cromwell, a Milton and a Mrs. Clarke, his daughter, and 
a thousand more, proving that lofty hills are apt to subside 
into lowly hollows. 

Nevertheless, to Isaac there pertained certain amiable 
and uncommon properties. He is, perhaps, the most blame- 
less of all characters in Scripture but one. Save a single 
falsehood, absolutely nothing is recorded against him. He 
was the faithful husband of one wife. He seems, too, to 
have possessed a certain gentleness, sweetness, and simplicity 
of disposition. His figure, " going forth into the fields to 
meditate at the evening tide," is painted for ever on the eye 



4IO THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

of the world. An action common now becomes glorified in 
the light of the past. It is the same with David's going to 
his chamber to weep, and with Christ's walking out " 'mid 
ripe corn on the Sabbath-day." And it seems no wonder, 
that the same person who had meditated in his early days 
should, in his old age, '• tremble very exceedingly" at the 
discovery of the fraud practised on him by his son Jacob. It 
is the genuine history of his peculiar temperament. 

Jacob, again, is a thorough Jew. In him, subtlety, love 
of this world's goods, and timidity, coexist with profound 
attachment to the God of his fathers, and ardent devotion. 
His patience, too, in so waiting and working for his bride, 
reminds you of that of his people, who have for ages been 
looking up to a heaven, which, whether it be black or bright, 
never opens, nor ever shall, to let forth thdr beloved Messiah. 

The poetical incidents in Jacob's history are exquisitely 
peculiar and interesting. Indeed, his whole life is as enter- 
taining and varied as a romance. There is his journey to 
Padan-aram, and the dream, which, says Hazlitt, " cast a 
light upon the lonely place, which shall never pass away." 
No picture has hitherto done this complete justice. Even 
Reubens has but dimly expressed the ideal of the smiling 
face of the young patriarch, itself a dream of beauty — the 
vast silent desert, stretching like eV^rnity around — the stone 
pillar, shining like a lump of gold in the radiance — and the 
undefined blaze of splendor (like a ladder, mountain, or stair ; 
the original word is uncertain), rising up in brightening gra- 
dations, till lost in one abyss of crudded glory, and with 
angelic shapes swimming up and down, like motes of light, 
in the liquid lustre. And who shall paint the bewildered 
and amazed aspect of the awakened patriarch, when, looking 
around and above, he finds the warm light of the vision gone, 
the dread yet tender voice past, and nothing around him but 
the dark desert, nothing beside him but the stone pillow, and 
the cold light of the stars of morning above, and when he 
says, '• Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." 

The scenes which follow around the well-side, where he 
met the daughters of Laban, are in the sweetest pastoral 
vein. His meeting with Esau has made many a heart over- 
flow in tears. But a deeper and stranger interest surrounds 
him, as he wrestles at Peniel, until the dawning of the day, 
with that mysterious figure of a " man," who seems to drop 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 413 

at once from heaven, shapes into dubious form during the 
shadows af the night, and melts away in the morning sun- 
shine. The passage is one of those strange pits of darkness 
which occur amid the narrative plains of the Pentateuch, 
taking you down in an instant, like Joseph, out of the clear 
shining of the sun, into a place of impenetrable mystery. 
Yet it is full of deep significance. It is one of many proofs 
that the Word, ere identifying himself with flesh, tried on^ 
once and again, if we may so speak, the robe of human na- 
ture, which he was everlastingly to wear. •' Jacob called the 
name of the place Peniel : for I have seen God face to face, 
and my life is preserved." -*• 

We must plead guilty, too, to an attachment to poor 
Esau. We like him as he "comes out red," even "all 
over like an hairy garment." We love to watch him in 
his impetuous way over the mountains and the valleys, 
another Nimrod, a mighty hunter, but not " before the Lord." 
We sigh as we see him devouring, with a hunter's hunger, 
the red pottage, into which he has recklessly shred his birth- 
right. We pity him still more, as he "cries with an exceed- 
ing great and bitter cry, Bless me, even me also, my 
father !" We feel, as we witness the scene of reconciliation 
with Jacob, how plaintive is the grief of a rugged nature 
when weep it must, and that rivers are the tears of rocks ; 
and, as we see him, for the last time, " returning on his way" 
to his own shaggy Seir, to become the founder of a rough 
race, inhabiting a country of fire and sand, we are not afraid 
to re-echo Isaac's blessing upon his head. He was not a 
child of grace, or of the promise, but he was a sincere and 
stalwart son of nature, with a " strong heart, fit to be the 
first strong heart of a people." 

Who forgets the affecting circumstances of Kachel's death 
in child-birth, when nature in her called the child Benoni, 
the " son of my sorrow," and grace in Jacob called him Ben- 
jamin, the " son of my right hand ?" The history of Joseph, 
again, is a succession of scenes, constituting the finest prose 
drama in the world. If ever drama possessed all the con- 
stituents of that species of composition, unity of plot, a " be- 
ginning, middle, and end," vicissitude of interest, variety of 
character, pathos of feeling, elegance of costume, and sim- 
plicity of language, it is this. Its commencement is so sim- 
ple, its denouement so ingenious, its close so satisfactory 



414 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

and triumphant ! And yet we never lose the feeling for a 
moment — " This is truth, although truth stranger far than 
fiction." And just as a drama looks more beautiful when 
spotted with lyrics, we have here one spot, at least, of tran- 
scendent beauty — Jacob's blessing, namely, when a-dying, 
over his children. It is intensely figurative. He ranges 
his children, like zodiacal signs, around his bed, not by name 
only, but by emblem. Reuben is a foul and trembling wave ; 
Simeon and Levi are " instruments of cruelty ;" Judah is a 
lion ; Zebulon's sign is a ship ; Issachar is a strong, couch- 
ing ass ; Dan is a serpent by the way ; Gad is a troop ; 
Asher, a loaf ofi- rich bread ; Naphtali is a hind let loose ; 
Joseph is a fruitful bough ; and Benjamin is a ravening 
wolf 

Passing farther down into the history, and omitting many 
points and characters touched on before, we mark with in- 
terest the spies on their way to the land of promise. They 
appear one company as they go ; as they return, they bear 
between them the same grapes of Eschol, and yet how dif- 
ferent the reports they bring ! Even the land flowing with 
milk and honey, has two sides to two different sets of eyes and 
hearts. To see the Millennial land, to see heaven aright, there 
must, in like manner, be purged hearts, prepared spirits, eyes 
cleansed with " euphrasy and rue." Let two men, of differ- 
ent faiths and tempers, enter into one peaceful and Christian 
house, they will bring back accounts conflicting to contradic- 
tion : one has seen nothing but dull commonplace, or harsh 
austerity ; the other has descried the quiet lustre of the 
peace that passeth understanding, and the half-formed halo 
of the joy that is unspeakable, and full of glory. Coleridge 
says of nature — 

" 0, lady, we receive but what we give : 
Ours is her luminous vesture, ours her shroud." 

This is but a part of the truth. We must meet nature, man, 
God himself, and his glory, half way. He gives a sun or a 
Schekinah to be admired ; but, on our part, there must be a 
soul to admire the same. Nay, in a profounder sense still, 
God gives all— the beauty, and the sense of it — the land- 
scape, and the eye — the moral loveliness, and the moral vision 
— the heaven, and the heart — and is at once the adored and 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 415 

the adorer : " for of him, and through him, and to him. are 
all things — to whom be glory for ever. Amen." 

Among the spies, there stood up two men of clear insight 
and firm faith, Caleb and Joshua. They were in the minori- 
ty, but they were right. Overborne by numbers at first, 
their word became stronger every hour, till it had been mad- 
ness to deny it. Thus it is always with the deeper and 
stronger insight of true men. It increases, because it is 
real, as well as strong ; whereas, the eyesight of the multi- 
tude, defective at first, soon weakens and fades away. 

Two other incidents in the history of Israel, ere the 
Jordan was passed, must be noticed : the rebellion of Korah, 
and the rise of Phinehas. There are forced and shallow 
eruptions in the moral and political world, which have little 
connection with its general current. They resemble break- 
ings out on the skin, rather than attacks on the seat of life ; 
they are transient revolts, and not revolutions, nor hardly 
rebellions. The wise man is ever ready to distinguish their 
true character, and to take his measures accordingly. While 
he must bow before an inevitable and profound convulsion 
of the internal elements, the outbreaks of petty disaff"ection 
he will at once burn away. The revolt of Korah and his 
company had an imposing aspect, but was, in reality, skin- 
deep. By one energetic eff'ort, therefore, by one appeal to 
the prayer-hearing guardian of the camp of Israel, Moses 
removes it. The whole disafi'ection is gathered into one 
point — into one inch, as it were, of envious fury against 
Moses and Aaron ; and below that inch, destruction yawns 
but once, and for a moment, and it sinks down and disap- 
pears for over. With censer in hand, with their strange fire 
burning in it, those would-be priests are swallowed up and 
hid. killed and buried, and a clean, and smooth, and sandy 
surface, conceals the particulars of their horrible doom. 

A deeper disafi'ection soon after seizes the camp. It is 
not this time so much against Moses, as it is against God ; 
it is not the disaffection of a clan of nobles, but of many of 
the congregation. " Israel joins himself unto Baal-peor." 
Moses himself is appalled. The plague is in the camp. He 
has received a command, and has circulated it, to " hang up 
the heads of the offenders." But he is yet hesitating about 
its execution, when, lo ! the sin comes to its open climax in 
his very sight, and ' in that of the congregation, who were 



41 6 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

weeping for it before the tabernacle ; an " Israelite brings 
unto his brethren a Midianitish woman," and then the " wild 
justice," of nature can slumber no more. Phinehas, an 
obscure priest, arises, pierces them both through with his 
dart, and the plague straightway is stayed. So, when 
rampant and inveterate evils reach their point, the schemes 
of the wise are not required. God selects the nearest in- 
struments, and the " things that are not," the very nonenti- 
ties of this world, bring to nought the things which are, but 
should not continue to be. 

The Book of Judges is the most miscellaneous history in 
Scripture. It records the events of a period when every 
man did as it was right in his own eyes. In this anarchy, 
as in all subsequent anarchies, there arose many peculiar 
characters, who rather defended God's cause by their prowess, 
than adorned it by their piety. Still the short danger of 
Ehud gleams upon us, and his words — '' I have a message 
from God unto thee" — ring in our ears, as did they once in 
Eglon's, the King of Moab. The ox-goad of Shamgar, too, 
is still preserved in the museum of our memory. Was it 
not one of the curiosities shown to Christian in the house 
which is called Beautiful ? Gideon's famous emblems were 
there also — the " fleece," the cake falling on the tent, besides 
the pitchers, the lamps, and the trumpets of his wondrous 
warfare. Then there succeed three heroes, each with a bend 
sinister either in his birth or his character. Abimelech, 
Jephtha, and Samson, remind us of Montrose, Claverhouse, 
and Rob Koy, in their close succession, equivocal reputation, 
and daring power and courage, and present us with the pic- 
tures of the first cleft through the skull by a stone from a 
woman's hand, the second presiding at his daughter's sacri- 
fice, and the third blinded, and bound in Delilah's lap. 

Samson, a personage with whom the blind giant of 
English poetry thought proper to measure his old but unfad- 
ed strength, is less remarkable, for beautiful or holy interest, 
than for striking points : such as his elephantine mildness, 
ere he was roused — the strong impulses which came upon 
him, and seemed necessary to develope his full powers — his 
unconsciousness, even in his mightiest feats, of doing or 
afterwards having done, any thing extraordinary — his lion- 
like love of solitude — his magnanimity — his childlike simpli- 
city — his tame subjection to female influence, and the sacred 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 417 



trust in which he held his unequalled energies. In the 
complete assortment and artful presentment of Samson's 
qualities as those of a patriot hero, there is more of the 
mythic semblance than in the history of any other of the 
Scripture worthies; but the distinct and definite account 
given of his parentage, and the particulars of his death, as 
well as Paul's allusion to him in the Hebrews, as a historical 
character, forbid us to doubt his reality. His religion, which 
has been questioned, is proved by the success, if not by the 
spirit, of his last prayer. 

The name of Ruth suggests the other female characters 
in Scripture. A modest rosary might be strung from their 
names. Simplicity, innocence, gentleness, piety, and devo- 
tedness to their husbands, fathers, or God, are qualities dis- 
tinguishing the majority. There is little individuality of 
excellence. Naomi is an old Ruth, Ruth a young Naomi — 
Hannah a middle-aged Naomi or Ruth — Mary, Lydia, Anna, 
and twenty others, are similar in all but age and circum- 
stances. Deborah, indeed, towers over the rest, holding her 
harp and stafF-sceptre upon the top of Tabor. Miriam, with 
timbrel in her hand, seems to emulate Deborah's prospective 
grandeur, till the leprosy of envy smites her forehead, and 
she is '* shut out seven days." Next to them, the little maiden 
in the family of Naaman has her own niche, and close to her 
appear the "widow with the two mites;" Mary Magdalene; 
the nameless woman, " who loved much, and to whom much 
was forgiven ; " and she, also nameless, of Samaria ; besides 
Phebe, Priscilla, and the elect lady. Nor must Esther, the 
magnificent and maidenly upstart, nor the wise and wealthy 
Queen of Sheba, be forgotten. Ignoble or cruel females are 
also to be found, such as Jezebel, and she who, in the quaint 
language of old Fuller, '-danced ofF the head of John the 
Baptist," and Sapphira, and Bernice. 

The mention of the beautiful suggests to us the name of 
Absalom, the most beautiful and foolish of the sons of men. 
He is a striking illustrasion of the austere and awful com- 
pensations of the universe. We find a strict parsimony al- 
ways exercised in doling out the precious gifts of the Creator. 
The thorn and the rose growing on one stem ; poison and 
beauty dividing the serpent between them ; fidelity, sagacity, 
and madness, equally characterizing the canine species ; sense, 
mildness, power, and clumsiness, united in the elephant ; the 
28 



41 8 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

peacock, with his splendid plumage and hideous scream; 
the nightingale, with her sober livery and matchless song ; 
the tropical clime, with its magnificent vegetation, its dis- 
eases, and its loathsome reptiles ; — these apparent anomalies 
are probably fragments of one wide law, portions of one wise, 
benevolent, but mysterious arrangement. " Nothing is given, 
all things are sold." Thus Absalom, with intellect, popular 
graces, and the face and form of an angel, began as a spoiled 
child, and ended in a composite of fool and villain. Like 
tlie horns of the stag in the fable, his long hair, which had 
been his glory, became his ruin. "What a pitiful and shock- 
ing figure he presents, dangling from the oak, and with 
Joab's dart quivering in his heart ! He lived and died 
" childless," but has had a large spiritual seed. Men speak 
with disgust of the grifi"ons and other motley forms of heraldry ; 
and with a kind of shudder of that stranger heraldry of na- 
ture, the quaint composites of geology ; but such combinations 
as Absalom, of "Beauty and the Beast" — such moral para- 
doxes — are ineffably more appalling and more unaccount- 
able. 

Joab, whom we have just mentioned, shines in a savage 
and lurid light. Faithful, as his shadow, to David, he is to 
all other "fierce as ten furies," and "false as hell." He is 
one of the homicides of hist#ry. His soul is incarnate in 
his sword. To " dare, and to dare, and to dare," is his whole 
creed and morality. Yet his decision, his thoroughgoing 
courage, his fidelity, and his rough, strong sense, give him 
great influence over David, who fears, hates, but cannot part 
with, and dare not quarrel with him. Thus, men of genius 
often yield to the power of men who possess mere rude in- 
tellect and a determined will. Men of genius fluctuate, like 
the wide, uncertain ocean ; men of will pass on, and pierce 
it with an iron prow. 

The next character of much interest, except Elijah, al- 
ready characterized, is Elisha. He is a soft and moonlike 
reflection of his master. Elijah floats up in fire to heaven ; 
Elisha makes iron swim on the waters. Elijah commands 
rain from heaven to stay the progress of famine ; Eliiah ob- 
tains the same purpose, by frightening away the Syrians 
from their camp. Elijah brings down fire from the clouds 
to kill ; Elisha sprinkles meal into the pot to cure. Elijah 
passes into heaven — the " nearest way tc the celestial gate" 



iiilillllllillilllliiilliil^ 



h\ 



m 



!\il \ 






1^^ \ 









.TOASH, THE CHILD KING. 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS N SCRIPTURE. 42 1 

— far above the valley and the shadow of death ; Elisha dies 
in his bed, although even there he is great, infusing might 
and the prophesy of victory into the hands of Joash, as he 
shoots his emblematic arrows against the Syrian foe ; and 
did not his very bones in the grave revive the dead ? ■ 

But, perhaps, nowhere does this prophet assume a more 
dignified aspect than in reference to Naaman and Gehazi. 
Never was a more singular group assembled than that which, 
on Naaman's return from Jordan, met at Elisha's humble 
door. Here stands the prophet, in serene self-control, in 
majestic simplicity, declining the offered reward. There, 
Naaman, the generous and noble, slowly, reluctantly returns 
the money into the bag. Behind him, his servants stare out 
their wide-mouthed astonishment at the scene ; and, in a 
corner, you see the mean Oehazi, his eye glistening and his 
face falling, as he loses sight, he fears for ever, of his darling 
coin. Equally striking is Elisha's interview with him, on 
his return from his fraudful following of the Syrian. Gehazi 
shrinks under his eye, as he says — " Went not mine heart 
with thee, when the man turned again from his chariot to 
meet thee ?" Forth, thou base one, from my presence ! But, 
ere going, take my gift, as thou hast taken Naaman's. He 
gave thee two talents of silver, which will support thee for 
only a few years ; my present will last thee for life, and be 
handed down as an heirloom to thy seed. Thou hast taken 
the money ; take now the stamp with it. Let the Syrian's 
leprosy follow his lucre. " The leprosy of Naaman shall 
cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever." And speech- 
less, confounded, feeling the white heat of the fell disease 
beginning to burn upon his brow, he less goes than vanishes 
from the prophet's presence, " a leper as white as snow." 

Certain characters of energetic and various evil now 
pass over our page. Hazael holds up in his hand the wet 
cloth with which he has choked his master, and seems to say 
— " That is my flag and terrible title to fame." Rabshakeh 
seems to rail on from the wall for evermore. Jehu, who is 
just Joab mounted in a chariot, driveth furiously to do his 
brief work of destruction, and then to commence an inglo- 
rious and godless reign. And Haman, after conspiring 
against the life of a nation, has his " face covered" in awful 
silence, and hangs on his own gallows — a substitute, without 
merit and without honor, for a whole people. Ravens these, 



422 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

preserved in Noah's ark, but not the less birds of foul feed- 
ing and of bad omen. 

In fine contrast with them, appear Mordecai, Ezra, and 
Nehemiah. Mordecai — that silent Jew — sits at the king's 
2;ate, an eternal emblem of the amari aliquid — the sad some- 
thing, which not only mars the joy of wicked men, but infects 
the lot of all. That silent, sombre Jew, do not seek to ap- 
proach or to disturb ! Leave him alone ; for, though he 
seems a serpent, if you touch him, he may start up the 
enemy : 

" That fiend, whose ghastly presence ever 

Near thee, like thy shadow, hangs. 

Dream not to chase ; the mad endeavor 

Would scourge thee to severer pangs. 

Be as thou art, thy settled fate, 

Dark as it is. all change would aggravate." 

Ezra again figures as the wise counsellor and diligent 
scribe ; and Nehemiah, the generous, bold, cautious, and de- 
vout " king's cup-bearer," has left us one of the first and most 
delightful of autobiographies. Honor to him, who still seems 
to stand at the unfinished wall, while over his head the " stars" 
are coming out, with a trowel in one hand, and a sword in 
the other ! It is the attitude of man, to whom the command 
has come with burning urgency — " Work God's work, and re- 
sist the enemies of thy soul, even unto blood, striving against 
sin." How striking, too, is the heroism of his language, 
when tempted to hold a conference with his subtle foes. " I 
am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down ;" or 
when urged to flee into the temple to save his life, he said, 
" Shall such a man as I flee ?" There spoke a genuine an- 
cient Puritan — a Jewish Hampden or Cromwell. 

We pass now to the New Testament, and find John the 
Baptist standing upon its very threshold. We remember 
the singular circumstances of this man's birth, and the strange 
prophecy that lay aforetime on him. He was to be the 
prophet of the Highest, and to go before the Lord to prepare 
his ways. But previously he had to undergo a severe and 
secret training : " He waxed strong in spirit, and was in the 
deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel." He was to 
come forth in the attitude of a mighty and dauntless re- 
former. He was to stem the torrent of a godless age, and to 
stem it at first alone. It was fit, then, that he should obtain 
a hardihood of temper, an indifi"erence to reproach, and a de- 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 423 

fiance of danger — that he should be able to confront a tyrant, 
and rebuke a Pharisee, and counsel a soldier, and '• know 
how to die." And where did he receive this strength of 
spirit ? Where was he nursed and hardened into a hero and 
a reformer? In an appropriate school — in the deserts. 
There he received his prophetical education. He attended 
no school of the prophets, he sat at the feet of no Gamaliel ; 
but among the rocks, and the caves, and the solitudes of the 
wilderness, he extracted the sublime and stern spirit of his 
office. The tameless torrent, dashing by, taught him his elo- 
quence. The visions of God furnished him with his theology. 
Perhaps, like Elias, his great prototype, he took a journey to 
Horeb, the Mount of God ; stood upon the black brow of 
Sinai ; and imbibed the remanent influence which still floated 
round that hill of fear. Furnished he must be, in no ordi- 
nary measure, for the duties of his extraordinary office. He 
was the immediate forerunner of the Messiah. His Master's 
feet were just behind him. He seemed afraid of being over- 
taken. He had but the one brief, bright hour of the morning 
star. The Sun of Righteousness was soon to darken his 
beams, and melt him down in the light of the new economy. 

Hence, his sermons are very short. They were the bro- 
ken and breathless cries of a messenger, who is barely in 
time to announce the coming of his Lord. '• Repent ye ! Be 
baptized ! Behold the Lamb of God ! The kingdom of 
heaven is at hand !" He was a voice — a stern and melan- 
choly voice — " the voice of one crying in the wilderness." 
His aspect was in keeping with his mission. It was some- 
what wild and savage. He was clad in camel's hair, and 
had a leathern girdle about his loins. His food was locusts 
and wild honey. Such was the apparition who, standing 
with one foot in the desert, and the other on the polluted soil 
of Palestine, uttered his stern and continuous cries. Men 
saw in him a resuscitation of the ancient prophet. He had, 
indeed, no rhythmic utterance, and no figurative flights ; but 
he had the dress, the spirit, the power, the wild-eyed fervor, 
and the boldness of his prototypes ; and hence the wilderness 
of Jordan rang to his voice, Judea was struck to the heart at 
his appearance, and Jerusalem went out, as one man, to his 
baptism. 

Besides the rough and furrowed garment of peculiar cha- 
racter possessed by John, we are struck with many subordi 



424 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

nate traits, with his keen-eyed recognition of Jesus, the 
wisdom and prudence he displays iff his advices to various 
classes of his auditors, with his perfect integrity and disiu 
terestedness, and with the una,ffected good grace with which 
he consents to be merged in his successor and superior. Many 
men yield to such a necessity with the reluctance of those 
rivers which wax intolerably noisy at the moment they are 
joining the larger streams. John easily, softly, yet eagerly, 
sinks on the bosom of the mightier one, and it becomes a 
wedding, not an extinction. 

One bold word cost him dear. Declined as he was, in 
the re-action of his great popularity, Herod ventures to cast 
him into prison, and there allows a rash oath to a dancing 
minion to entangle him in the ghastly crime of the murder 
of a man he esteemed. That head, which had shone on the 
edge of the desert like a rising star of eve, and been mis- 
taken by many for the head of Christ, appears now all clotted 
with gore, and gray with previous anguish, upon a charger. 
It is ever thus that the world has used its protesting and in- 
spired souls. And though the hemlock no more stops the 
mouth of a Socrates, nor the saw crashes through the body of 
an Isaiah, and our chargers be empty of such heads as the 
Baptist's, yet Wisdom's children are still subject to peculiar 
pains and penalties — misunderstood, if not murdered — neg- 
lected, if not gagged — and, if not torn. limb from limb, have, 
how often, their feelings lacerated, their motives and their 
characters recklessly reviled ! The Baptist possesses one 
honor altogether peculiar to himself. His epitaph was spo- 
ken by Christ : " Verily, I say unto you, among them that 
are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John 
the Baptist." Who would not wish to have died John's death 
twice over, to have obtained such a tribute from such lips ? 

Among Christ's disciples, besides the two formerly 
characterized, stand out boldly distinct other two — Thomas 
and Judas. Thomas is the incarnation of doubt. He may 
represent that class who demand demonstrative or sensible 
evidence for their faith. This is not. perhaps, the highest 
species of believers, but it is a class which, like Thomas, 
shall yet receive satisfaction. Now, there are many Thom- 
ases, and they may probably be satisfied sooner than they 
think, and sooner than many of them need desire. " For 
who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 427 

when he appeareth 7 For he is like a refiner's fire, and like 
fuller's soap." 

Judas Iscariot — what a host of dark thoughts and images 
start up at the mention of that detested name ! His name 
seems hung up on a gallows in the sight of all men, that 
human nature might, in the course of ages, pay its full 
arrears of hatred, contempt, and disgust, to the guilt it repre- 
sents. Children loathe him, and stammer out curses from 
their little hearts. Divines in every age have launched in- 
vectives, burning in truth and eloquence against him. Dante 
heats for him a hell seven times hotter, and classes him next 
in crime to Lucifer himself Jesus utters but one word ; 
but it is a fearful one — "one of you is a devil." To other 
criminals, repentance, however late, conciliates forgiveness, 
and suicide procures an awful pity. But men and devils 
seem to unite in trampling on the scattered bowels and 
broken rope of this suicide. Even in the place of woe, 
many will fancy the poet's words realized for him, and 
him alone : — 

" The common damned shun his society, 
And look upon themselves as fiends lessfbid/' __,- — 

His history, indeed, seems a frightful anomaly, even in the 
annals of crime. He was a treasurer and a traitor, an apos- 
tle and a thief ; while listening to Christ, he was measuring 
him for the cross ; when he sold him, it was for the price of 
a dog ; when he betrayed him, it was with a kiss of hypoc- 
risy so vile, that it seems yet to ring through the earth, eternal 
in its infamy ; when remorse awakened, he rushed in to the 
high priests with bloodshot eye, and the money chinking in 
his trembling hands, and said — "I have sinned in that I 
have betrayed the innocent blood ;" and to give the whole a 
dark consistency, he hies to a field, and there, amid the 
gloom of night, hangs himself: the rope breaking, and 
his bowels gushing out; and we seem to hear the fiends, 
with a yell of unusual joy, seizing on their prey. 

How account for a crime and a character so portentous 
and unnatural as this ? In vain, to say with Whately and 
Home, that Judas betrayed Christ for the purpose of forcing 
him to reveal himself as the King of the Jews. In this 
case, would Christ have spoken of him in language so 
strong? Besides, Christ had positively declared that he 



428 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

was to die. And Judas had been too long in Christ's 
company not to know that all his words were sure of 
fulfilment. 

Our notion of Judas is, that he " had a devil, and was 
mad" — that he was a demoniac — that probably, for crimes 
committed by him formerly, he was handed over to the ene- 
my, and had Satan instead of soul. He became the mere 
vessel of an infernal will. With this agree many circum- 
stances in his story, and the language used concerning him 
by Christ. His rush to suicide especially reminds you of 
that of the demon-filled swine. In stating this view, we do 
not mean to palliate his crime, or to whitewash his character. 
He had undoubtedly " tempted the devil," and been con- 
signed over to him for his sins. But the theory commends 
itself to us as the more probable, and as taking the character 
out of the category of monsters of wickedness — a class so 
rare in the world. We would, in short, divide Judas into 
three parts, and assign one to guilt, a second to madness, and 
a third to hell. 

And although we have, to complete the picture of the com- 
mon view of his character, spoken of the demons snatching 
his soul, we are far enough from being inclined to dogmatize 
upon his future fate. All that Peter ventures to say of it is, 
that he went to his " own place ;" and God forbid that we 
should dare to say any more. 

The book of acts presents us with a great many charac- 
ters, of whom, besides the apostles, the rapt Stephen, the 
Ethiopian Eunuch, the brave Cornelius, the most marked are 
unhappily evil. Barnabas, Ananias, Philip, Aquila, Mark, 
Silas, Timotheus, and Luke himself, have not much that is 
individual and distinctive. The sameness of excellence at- 
taches to them all. It is very different with the others. 
Their shades are all dark, but all strikingly discriminated. 

There is, for example. Simon Magus, the begetter and 
namegiver to a distinct and dreadful crime (Simony), an ori- 
ginal in wickedness, a genuine and direct " child of hell." 
No mistake about him. He thinks every thing, as well as 
every person, *' has its price," and would bribe the very Spirit 
of God. You see him retiring from Peter's scorn and curse, 
blasted, cowering, half-ashamed, but unconverted. 

Then there is Herod, appearing on a set day, in (as early 
historians tell us) a dress spangled with silver, which, as it 



THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 429 

caught the sun, shone and glittered, and giving an oration to 
the people, who shout, " It is the voice of a God, not of a 
man ;" till.^ as he is just beginning to believe the insane in- 
cense, a deputation from the grave — a company of worms — 
claim a closer audience, and he is at once flattered and festered 
to death. 

Then there is Ananias the liar, smitten down amid his 
sin, and seen writhing in the lightnings of Peter's eye. 

Then there is Elymas, the sorcerer, reduced in a moment 
to the level of his own gods, who have " eyes, but see not," 
Rnd made for the first time in his life earnest, as he gropes in 
vain to find the day. 

Then there is Gallio, another great original in the world 
of evil, the first representative of a large class who, in all 
Ages succeeding, have thrown the chill of their careless and 
cutting sneer upon all that is earnest and lofty in nature or 
man, in life or in religion. 

Then there is the town-clerk of Ephesus, one of those 
persons who substitute prudence for piety, and who find a 
sun in the face of a time-piece — who tell men when they are 
not to act, but never when the hour of action has fully come, 
and when delays are as contemptible as they are dangerous. 

Then there is Tertullus, the tool, servile, wiry, accommo- 
dating, plausible ; who talks, but never speaks ; and whose 
character may be studied as representing, in a full and ideal 
manner, all courtly pleaders who have since appeared, as 
well as many who have pled in nobler causes. 

Then there is Felix, whom one trembling has immortal- 
ized. Rude the lyre ; but a great master once stood before 
it, and it once vibrated to his touch. Even nettleshade has 
sometimes been made musical in the blast. 

Then there is Agrippa, the " almost Christian" — one of 
thousands who, were Christianity and the thrill produced by 
eloquence the same thing, would be believers ; but who, as 
it is, will lose heaven by a hair's-breadth,and feel little sorrow ! 

Then there is Festus, the emblem of the cool, intellec- 
lectual man, who finds an easy solution for the problem of 
earnestness, or genius, or enthusiasm, or religion — a problem 
which, otherwise, would distress and disturb him in the cheap 
cry, " It is madness — Paul, Burke, Chalmers, and Irving, 
were mad." 

Then, in the Epistles, we find a glimpse, and no more, of 



=JJ 



430 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 

Nero, the mysterious tyrant of Rome, the delicate infernal, 
the demon in elegant undress, the musical murderer, so 
whimsically graceful in the management of his horrors, com- 
bining the soul of a Moloch with the sublety and attractive- 
ness of manner possessed by a Belial. We can fancy Paul, 
whose sublety was not the least of his powers, foiling the 
tyrant at his own weapons, and thus " escaping the mouth 
of the lion^'' — a word expressing rather the fear with which 
he was regarded than the character he possessed. 

"We close this rapid glance at the more peculiar and 
striking of Scripture characters, by expressing our amaze- 
ment : — First, at their multitude ; secondly, at their variety ; 
thirdly, at the delicacy with which they are discriminated ; 
fourthly, at the manner in which they are exhibited — so art- 
less, brief, and masterly — not by analyses or descriptions, 
but by actions and words ; fifthly, at the great moral and 
emblematical lessons which they teach ; sixthly, at the fact 
that the majority of these characters have left duplicates to 
this hour ; seventhly, at the honesty of the writers who re-? 
cord them ; and, lastly, at this significant fact, there is one 
character who appears transcendent above them all, at once, 
in purity, power, and wisdonu TJie Scripture writers register 
the fall of Adam, the drunkenness of Noah, the incest of Lot, 
the falsifications of Abraham, the passionate wrath of Moses, 
the adultery and murder of David, Peter's lie, John's ambi- 
tion, and Paul's over-subtlety ; but to Jesus, they ascribe 
nothing but what is amiable, good, and god-like. They ex- 
hibit him more eloquent than Isaiah, and more wise than 
Solomon ; and yet holy as an angel, and humble as the poor 
woman who brake the alabaster box of ointment at his feet. 
There are spots in the sun ; but there are none in thy beams, 
O Sun of Righteousness ! 

This spotless Lamb is. He exists somewhere. ' He is, 
we believe, at God's right hand. He is preparing, as he has 
promised, to come down. We must appear at his bar. Our 
lives must be tested and our nature searched in the light of 
his countenance. Let us prepare for this meeting, which 
must be, and may be soon, by putting on the only character 
in which it shall be safe to confront his eye — that, namely, 
of little children. The Divine Child must be met by " little 
children ; " and amid their hosannas (as he entered into the 
ancient temple), must he enter again into the prepared and 



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